[Caroline Gordon's] territory is the South—specifically Kentucky, in that time not so long ago when families still kept track of first cousins twice removed, and when the men spent their days hunting while the women, left behind, sat langorously on the gallery.

The extraordinary vigor of her "Collected Stories" arises from the fact that Caroline Gordon's heart lies more with the hunters than with those women on the gallery. No scent of faded lavender drifts from these pages. Instead, there's the smell of frost and blood and wood smoke. Dogs bay at possums, hooves clatter past, a child calls, "Honey, Honey, Bee Ball…. I cain't see y'all…." There's the taste of home-cured ham, the sight of fish dimpling the water and the baited pause while a bird climbs toward a perfectly aimed shot.

Professor Aleck Maury (whom some may recognize from the novel "Aleck Maury, Sportsman") charges...