The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

Kate DiCamillo picked this as one of her favorites in WSIRN episode 213. She says she goes back to these stories all the time for the insight into humanity, rereading them every year, ever since she was assigned Eudora Welty in college. She especially recommended "A Visit of Charity" to me but suggests you start with the first story and move to the end. Kate called every story "a gift in a different way." Ann Patchett writes the intro to this new edition. From the publisher: "The forty-one pieces collected in this new edition, written over a period of three decades, showcase Welty’s incredible dexterity as a writer. Her style seamlessly shifts from the comic to the tragic, from realistic portraits to surrealistic ones, as she deftly moves between folklore and myth, race and history, family and farce, and the Mississippi landscape she knew so well, her wry wit and keen sense of observation always present on the page."