Simpkinsville and Vicinity: Arkansas Stories of Ruth McEnery Stuart

Stuart portrays characters and incidents with delicious humor that overrides the sentimental tone dominant in most local-color writing. Her stories and sketches celebrate the minor triumphs, joys, and tragedies of country and small town life with the same intimacy and charm she displayed on lecture platforms throughout the country. The ten stories collected here are chosen from the best of Stuart’s work and prefaced by Ethel C. Simpson in a wise and revealing introduction that is at the same time a scholarly discussion and an amiable welcome to Simpkinsville. This reissue of a classic in Arkansas storytelling will be met with enthusiasm by historians, folklorists, and general readers alike. In Stuart’s depiction of the plain folk of Arkansas, she both entertains and instructs as she gently mocks the foibles of human nature and the attitudes and tastes of the rural South in the Gilded Age.