The Year of the Gator

Country People

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Country People

In a small town in rural New York, in the wooded hills between Cooperstown and the Mohawk Valley, those who socialize can have no preferences. The poor mingle with the rich and educated. Laborers rub elbows with teachers. Drunks socialize with respectable residents, and sinners share their lives with churchgoers.

These seven stories embody big themes in a small-town setting where a host of country characters carry out acts of love, devotion, jealousy, ambition, deceit and murder as their lives become intertwined. 

“Laura,” the lead story, sets the tone for rural themes and country characters. F. Norton Hamilton, a Yale Ph.D., marries Laura, a beautiful young woman in a small town where he researches folk stories. He belittles the town people for their religion and their ignorance, and shows only slightly higher regard for his wife.

As his marriage unravels, he becomes a character in a folk tale he studies. He commits a crime of passion that is concealed by the imagination and superstition of local people.

Country People: Stories from Rural New York

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