Regional stories have a long heritage in American literature. The earliest books written in America were regional ones explaining explorations in Virginia or hardships in New England. As the country expanded westward, stories of the new regions fascinated readers, and pockets of American literature developed in various territories. Place, more than time, became the essential ingredient in American fiction, especially in literature about the American South. The southern novel moves slowly through time and, unlike the western novel, puts less emphasis on plot and action than on place and characters.

Lenski, who said she wanted to depict different regions accurately, has incorporated some characteristics of the southern novel in Strawberry Girl.

Using the characters' dialect to establish the region's isolation, she attempts to illustrate the complicated layers of a society untouched by the outside world.

Lenski explores southern character types similar to those found in the...