Dimestore A Writer&39s Life [Paperback]

For the inimitable Lee Smith, place is paramount. For forty-five years, her fiction has lived and breathed with the rhythms and people of the Appalachian South. But never before has she written her own story.

Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smiths youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters, and her daddys dimestore. It was in that dimestore--listening to customers and inventing adventures for the stores dolls--that she became a storyteller. Even when she was sent off to college to earn some culture, she understood that perhaps the richest culture she might ever know was the one she was driving away from--and its a place that she never left behind.

Dimestores fifteen essays are crushingly honest, wise and perceptive, and superbly entertaining. Smith has created both a moving personal portrait and a testament to embracing ones heritage. Its also an inspiring story of the birth of a writer and a poignant look at a way of life that has all but vanished.