This is  a fine volume of short stories, by McPherson a 1981 recipient of a MacArthur Award and the 1978 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, who died at 72 in July of this year. Educated at Harvard Law School, he never practiced law but under the influence of Richard Yates while at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Ralph Ellison he became a writer, an editor at The Atlantic, and a 40+ year faculty member at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  This volume of short stories continues the theme of increasing awareness and consciousness of the African-American experience in the US.  In stories about Black Americans abroad and at home, McPherson draws vivid portraits of race relations at the end of the 20^th C.  Fine plot, language, and dialogue characterize these stories.