Nothing with Strings: NPR's Beloved Holiday Stories

The mundane and the miraculous stand side by side in these sketches and stories of Southern small-time life by the author of Quite a Year for Plums.

Rebecca Vnuk - Library Journal

National Public Radio commentator White (Mama Makes Up Her Mind) collects her short stories, which she's read on air over the years. In "The Progress of Deglutition," Sally's Thanksgiving is cut short when her husband asks for a divorce out of the blue, while in "Return to Sender," a woman tries to order items from the 1909 Sears catalog reprint to keep her memory alive. While these stories are not cheery Christmas tales-several don't seem to have even a slight relationship with any holiday whatsoever-they are all interesting and well written. For most short story collections.

Bailey White was born and raised in Thomasville, Georgia. She has worked as a schoolteacher and a writer. Her essays and stories have appeared in magazines and on NPR's All Things Considered. She is the author of two story collections, ama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel, and a novel, Quite a Year for Plums.