This collection of essays devoted to the centrality of place in the short stories and novels of some of the twentieth century's most famous American writers was conceived as a way to honor the life and career of Walter Sullivan, an author for whom place was central both in his fiction and in his critical writing. The works explored in this volume range from the Middle West realism of Fitzgerald and Powers to the wilderness vision of Faulkner and the historical and political fiction of Warren. The collection turns upon the axletree of Eudora Welty's short fiction and her criticism, especially the classic essay "Place in Fiction." Place, as Eudora Welty declares, is "where the writer] has his roots, place is where he stands; in his experience out of which he writes, it provides the base of reference; in his work, the point of view." "Fiction," she continues, "depends for its life on place." These essays prove the truth of that dictum.