
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993                   TAG: 9305020221
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

N.C. WRITERS FIND OUT THEY CAN GO HOME AGAIN

THE ROUGH ROAD HOME: STORIES BY NORTH CAROLINA WRITERS. Edited with an Introduction by Robert Gingher. University of North Carolina Press. $16.50.

In his introduction to this marvelous collection, Robert Gingher writes that the "flight-and-return pattern" of North Carolinians' stories "is in the genes, as old as blood." To wit, Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward, Angel" and "You Can't Go Home Again."

What this collection's 22 stories demonstrate, Gingher asserts, is that "we can go home again, but it's a rough road back."

He needn't have provided such a substantial reason for me to have loved this book.

Not that I'm totally convinced of the North Carolina-ness of every single writer included; Grundy, Va., after all has some pretty strong claims on Lee Smith, and I believe you'd have quite a time getting Arkansas to give up claim to Maya Anglou.

But that's nit-picking. The work included here is uniformly strong, serious-minded, and vivid. It's also remarkably diverse in form, subject matter and approach, all the while remaining ineffably Southern.

Here are the genteel Old World sounds of Max Steele's characters in "The Hat of My Mother" and the harsh New World sounds of Lee Zacharias' "Disasters," right alongside the unmistakable mountain voices of Doris Betts', Clyde Edgerton's and Lee Smith's characters.

Here are healing angels in Allan Gurganus' "It Had Wings," homeless prophets in Alice Adams' "The Oasis," women unafraid to war with demons in Linda Beatrice Brown's "1940 - Winter," and bitter class wars in Donald Secreast's "Summer Help" and Robert Morgan's "Murals."

Virtually every story is lighted with hope, too: the hope that grows out of a strong religious presence. Even though this presence, as in Tim McLaurin's "Below the Last Lock," is often implied rather than revealed.

Some of the selections included are novel excerpts; most are stories, a couple of them apparently never before published. What they demonstrate, taken together, is that a complex and unified anthology can be drawn together from the work of many minds, provided the editor's mind is imaginative and clear.

Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for the Roanoke Times & World-News.

by CNB