Lee Smith is the author of twelve novels and four short story collections, the latest of which is Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger.

And yet she kept on working, always working, writing those daring and serious stories which dive below consciousness, drawing us out of our comfortable selves and down into strange places;...

I was born in a rugged ring of mountains in southwest Virginia—mountains so high, so straight up and down, that the sun didn’t even hit our yard until about eleven o’clock...