CLARE AND THE COUNTRY PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES features Tales of Lower Appalachia and traces the history of the fictional Waldentown from its post-Civil War days through the new century. The town has its first legal hanging, house fires that cause one couple to retreat to a remote community to rebuild. Burley's residents had never even seen a chocolate cake. Clare Reardon is the "town girl" who has to learn to cope: with a husband she nurses during the 1917 flu epidemic, with a brother who returns from the Great War missing both legs to trench disease. (395 pages; 125,000 words) The collection features vignettes (short shorts), short stories, novellas, and a short novel.