Originally published in 1995, this book explores American short story sequences as a twentieth-century genre.

Introduction J. Gerald Kennedy; 1. Henry James's Incipient Poetics of the Short Story Sequence: The Finer Grain (1910) Richard A. Hocks; 2. Toomer's Cane as narrative sequence Linda Wagner-Martin; 3. Hemingway's In Our Time: the biography of a book Michael Reynolds; 4. Wright writing reading: narrative strategies in Uncle Tom's Children John Lowe; 5. The African-American voice in Faulkner's Go Down Moses John Carlos Rowe; 6. Meditations on nonpresence: re-visioning the short story in Eudora Welty's The Wide Net Susan V. Donaldson; 7. Nine Stories: J. D. Salinger's linked mysteries Ruth Prigozy; 8. Cheever's Shady Hill: a suburban sequence Scott Donaldson; 9. John Updike's Olinger Stories: new light among the shadows Robert M. Luscher; 10. Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine: narrative communities and the short story sequence Hertha D. Wong; 11. From Anderson's Winesburg to Carver's Cathedral: the short story sequence and the semblance of community J. Gerald Kennedy.