-The image that Jane Rule's book both begins and ends on is haunting precisely because it captures the past that's always lurking within the Delta's present. There is something surreal, almost Kafkaesque on display here. A farmer with his back to us drives a tractor straight ahead on a lonely dirt road. Big woods loom on the left. On the right, at the edge of a field of cotton, a grey-clad horseman moves in the opposite direction, a ghost returning to history.---Steve Yarbrough, from the introduction

The Mississippi Delta evokes mystery, beauty, and hardship in equal measures. Its...