At their best the fiction and non-fiction of William Price Fox capture that reality which D. H. Lawrence terms "the spirit of place" in both the narrowest and broadest sense. Essentially, Fox is a South Carolina and a Southern writer. His collections of short stories, Southern Fried and Southern Fried Plus Six, are good and funny, but with the exception of a few pieces are little more than local color exercises…. Yet Fox's later fiction as well as some of his non-fiction indicates that he is capable of doing much more. Though they have the usual regional setting, both Moonshine Light, Moonshine Bright, and to a greater extent Ruby Red, move toward the development of a larger theme. (p. 30)

Fox's short stories are varied within a somewhat restricted setting, and there are some fine moments in them. The dominant mood is one of tempered nostalgia as the narrators...