SOURCE: "The Faces of Reynolds Price's Short Fiction," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. III, No. 3, Spring, 1966, pp. 300-06.

In the following essay, Stevenson traces the theme of love as it is manifested through kinship, hospitality, and generosity in The Names and Faces of Heroes.

The controlling theme of Reynolds Price's fiction is the revelation that comes through the quest for self-knowledge, not in any intellectual sense but in the discovery that meaning and identity are found in giving, and in giving is learned the fulfilment of love. Price constructs everything in his stories around the dramatic contrast between all those human and natural forces that defeat and wear down and those moments of devotion and commitment found only in love. And this love is not a towering, raging, selfdestroying passion, but the kind of love nurtured and made real in the relationships found in kinship, whether they...