"English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying a tribe on the Sepik River in the Territory of New Guinea with little success. Increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when he encounters the famous and controversial Nell Stone and her wry, mercurial Australian husband Fen. Bankson is enthralled by the magnetic couple whose eager attentions pull him back...

The author describes how the loss of her job and the subsequent need to economize inspired her to look for wisdom from her own family's past in the stories told by her mother and in the recipes of her indomitable grandmother.

With this book all the Gibbsville stories by the American master John O'Hara are finally collected in a single volume. John O'Hara called it "my Pennsylvania Protectorate," identifying the anthracite coal region of his hometown, Pottsville, in Schuykill County. Between Appointment in Samarra (1934) and his death in 1970, O'Hara set five novels and more than fifty short stories or novellas in the region. With this lasting accomplishment, O'Hara's Gibbsville...