Michelle Vaughn's Reviews > The Passing: Stories

These are grandparent porch stories. You know, the stories your grandpa or your elderly neighbor tells about his/her childhood. There are some sharp observations about how what we call progress might not be progress, but also some alarmingly blasé references to the crimes of the past (in one passage, about a former prominant townsman, Sams writes, "When he died, he still possessed thirty thousand acres of land, a passel of slaves and a good name"), interspersed with some wickedly funny turns of phrases. But mostly, it's just a litany of anecdotes about people you do not know who've been long dead -- Son John Jones and Old Man I.E. and Newton Gaddis and Mr. John Burch's daughters, etc.