Nancy Culpepper

April 24, 2006
A somber, slow-going drama in stories by award-winning author Mason (An Atomic Romance
) follows a Kentucky farm family's quiet changes over the decades. When the first story begins in 1980, Nancy, the elder daughter of the Culpepper family, is in her late 30s, has an eight-year-old son with husband Jack Cleveland (a Yankee) and lives outside Philadelphia. Returning to the family farm to help her parents, Lila and Spence, move Granny into a nursing home, Nancy concerns herself with old photographs buried in Granny's house that feature Nancy's namesake, a long-lost aunt whom no one seems to know anything about. Subsequent stories deal with Granny's death, the decline and death of Jack's dog, the building tension between Nancy and Jack—both yearning for the spontaneity of their swinging '60s courtship—and the fate of the Culpepper farm. In the longest story, Lila is diagnosed with breast cancer, undergoes surgery and is lovingly nursed by Spence, Nancy and her sister, Cat. Though detailed and honest in its depiction of illness and loss and skillful in handling Nancy's lingering discomfort with the North, Mason's novel-in-stories lacks her usual sparkle.

May 15, 2006
With the careful detail of a loving native, Mason ("An Atomic Romance") reveals Kentucky through the lives of two generations of the Culpepper family in these linked short stories, which first appeared in "The New Yorker" and other publications. The senior Culpeppers belong to a dying breed of rural country people whose small-farm lifestyle is being swallowed up by New South suburban development. The account of Lila's disorienting hospital experiences, her husband Spence's quiet struggle with his wife's illness, and their grown daughters' view of their aging are all poignant and real. Much of the story focuses on daughter Nancy, who left Kentucky for her education and never really returned. Her more worldly husband gently mocks her rural roots, and Nancy herself never really reconciles herself to a life away. The stories, which read like an episodic novel, span a 25-year period that marks changes in both the family and the home in a well-blended fictional arc. Recommended." -Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA."

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2006
Kentuckian Nancy Culpepper first appeared in a 1980 short story, and she has resurfaced in Mason's much-loved fiction ever since. In a volume similar to Ellen Gilchrist's collections of stories about her recurring characters Rhoda Manning and Nora Jane Whittington, Mason collects her Nancy Culpepper stories, including the powerful novella about Nancy's mother's bout with cancer, "Spence + Lila" (1985), and several potent new tales. Mason writes with a swinging, country-road gait and a sunny transparency that belie the emotional weight of her tender and bittersweet tales of family, home, and loss. A calm, reticent, and subtly charming historian married to an intense photographer, Nancy harbors a deadpan wit. When we first meet her, she is looking through her granny's long-neglected family photographs. In "The Heirs," a flat-out masterpiece, she is once again sorting through her family's belongings, this time finding a stick of dynamite and a cache of letters that proves far more explosive. Mason sends her stories aloft like kites on the wind, expertly working the string, her feet planted firmly on the sustaining earth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)