Remembering: Joan Williams' Uncollected Pieces illustrates again that rediscovering an admired author-especially through his or her later works-is every bit as engaging as discovering a new literary voice. Joan Williams, an accomplished and prize-winning southern novelist, published a number of short stories and nonfiction pieces in the later years of her life; a life complicated early on by the influential men with whom she was involved, namely American author William Faulkner and independent publisher Seymour Lawrence. For years these literary gems were scattered and virtually unattainable to readers. Remembering: Joan Williams' Uncollected Pieces unites the formerly published but never collected material. The book's title piece, "Remembering," features a 1981 essay on Byronic Mississippi-born poet, Frank Stanford-known to Joan from his infancy until his tragic suicide-whose collected poems What About This (2015) appeared thirty-seven years posthumously. Skillful, nuanced, and altogether approachable, these mature efforts by a seasoned writer will surprise and reward. Remembering is a lovely testament to the craft of writing and Joan Williams' indelible style.
"Joan Williams comes home again in this fifth novel, Pay the Piper, with familiar Southern themes of sorrow, change and renewal. She puts on the head of a pin here a saga of passion and of trust and hope and dreams consumed in flames of living hell."
William Boozer, Nashville Banner
"The Wintering tells a poignant and unusual story of the love between a world-famous writer and a young girl who comes to pay him homage. Miss Williams has brought off the story of uneven love with extraordinary skill. There is nothing maudlin or cheap about the way she handles her story. Nothing is varnished, nothing is prettied up."
Joyce Carol Oates, Detroit Free Press
"Old Powder Man is the kind of traditional novel that affirms the intrinsic dignity and worth of the novel. . . . Its mode is naturalistic in the highest sense of that word; there is nothing that is just statistical as in some American naturalists, but all detail is necessary and illuminating. One thinks of Flaubert, and this is the highest kind of praise."
