SOURCE: "A Virginia Boyhood," in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 12, 1993, pp. 3, 12.

In this excerpt, Eder extols Styron's deft interweaving of historical occurrences, Southern legend, and his own autobiographical experiences in A Tidewater Morning.

Styron has not published much since Sophie's Choice 14 years ago. There was a collection of essays, and a brief, lucid account of an episode of clinical depression. To revive three old short stories might be taken as a minor tidying on behalf of a remarkable but never prolific writer. In fact, read together, the "Tidewater" stories stand as one of Styron's finest works.

Two tell of events in the life of a boy named Paul [Whitehurst] one when he is 10, the other when he is 13; and both set in a small town in Virginia's flat tidewater country. In the third, Paul is 20, a lieutenant serving in the Pacific in World War II. Together...