A young boy learns a valuable lesson after he and his grandmother dabble with voodoo. A man is compelled to buy a pig to overcome his midlife crisis. A troubled father analyzes his parenting decisions as he's perched in a tree drinking beer.

These are three of the storylines in "The Good Samaritan, and Other Stories," a thoroughly unique and entirely entertaining collection of seven short stories and one novella set in the American South. Sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, the stories are narrated by male characters reviewing the circumstances of their lives and how they got over their...