I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down
William Gay
Free Press
<p>William Gay firmly established himself as "the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern Lit" (<i>Esquire</i>) with his debut novel, <i>The Long Home,</i> and his critically acclaimed follow-up, <i>Provinces of Night.</i> Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken, colorful souls hard at work charting the pathos of their interior lives.<p>His debut collection, <i>I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down,</i> brings together what Gay's dedicated readers are eager for and what new readers will find the perfect introduction to his world: thirteen stories that are mined from this same fertile soil teeming with the grizzled, everyday folk that Gay is famous for bringing to life. In these pages readers meet old man Meecham, who escapes from his new nursing home only to find his son has rented their homestead to "white trash"; Quincy Nell Qualls, who not only falls in love with the town lothario but, pregnant,...