A Serigamy of Stories

In this memoir a child''s recollections of her family and warm home life are lovingly preserved in a front-porch ambience. Windham who frequently participates in oral storytelling sessions around the country grew up in a small Alabama town in the early part of this century. She was surrounded by offbeat adults in those years among them a doughty aunt who was the town''s formidable postmistress and a circuit-riding Baptist-preacher grandfather. They were fodder for legends within the family as well as story-creators themselves. As Windham weaves her memories there are digressions into tales that mark the castes of a bygone South tales that move in slow cadence and bring to life a family that accommodated all members in their entertaining oddities. The word serigamy is according to the author a family coinage used through the generations to indicate a goodly number and the word aptly applies as well to this charming retrospective.