Remembering: Joan Williams' Uncollected Pieces illustrates again that rediscovering an admired author--especially through his or her later works--is every bit as engaging as discovering a new literary voice.

Joan Williams, an accomplished and prize-winning southern novelist, published a number of short stories and nonfiction pieces in the later years of her life; a life complicated early on by the influential men with whom she was involved, namely American author William Faulkner and independent publisher Seymour Lawrence.

For years these literary gems were...