An Idyl of the Wabash, and Other Stories

Along the Wabash, in towns where everyone knows everyone else’s business, ten stories catch ordinary people at the moment their settled convictions give way. A New England woman who arrives certain that no Hoosier could match her upbringing finds her opinions worn down by kindness—and by a widowed preacher with two small children.

Elsewhere a lifelong churchwoman is coaxed to her first play and comes away praising the Lord; a ladies’ literary circle takes up theosophy and gets rather more than it wanted; an aging couple wait out a layover at a country depot with a sorrow they have carried for years; and a factory girl’s first bought-and-paid-for picture brings her something she never expected.

Written by a newspaperwoman who spent half a century watching her neighbors, these sketches of small-town Indiana life catch the comedy of piety, the stubbornness of love, and the quiet dramas that pass unnoticed in places said to have no stories at all.