I've spent so much time trying to find a book like this. Finding Signs is about the potential for adventure in life. Set in the 70s, it is similar in style to On The Road, but Finding Signs, written by a woman, delves far deeper into the philosophy behind the archetypal wanderer. This book is truly a masterpiece and I am crushed that Sharlene Baker has not written anything else.

A nice collection of short stories from up-and-coming authors. If you are like me you enjoy discovering the new voices in fiction and that is what this collection offers. Good, solid story telling that is an interesting mix of southern genre and intriguing contemporay tales. Several stories I found particularly strong and mature, the kind that linger. If you appreciate short stories you will enjoy this book.

What a wonderful collection of new voices to represent the literary South. Faulkner and Williams would be proud.

found this to be a quirky but solid collection of the type that a friend of mine once dubbed "Southern Realism" because of its strange, dark and moving elements. Oh, yes, there's humor and lightness, but it's like the quote on the cover, which is what made me want to buy the book to begin with: "These folks all write like Archangels With Avenging Pens".
I read a lot of Southern Fiction and can't get enough of the "New South". It's exploratory and revealing and always entertaining, with characters you simply have to believe in because who could make them up? This book abounds in these qualities. There's a good variety here, too... the stories deal far outside what most people would think of when they think of The South, but which is, indeed, the South.

I have to admit that I was impressed with the litany of honors that these writers had won. I hadn't heard of most of them, so I guess there's a lot more going on in short story writing than even an avid short story reader like myself realizes. It's a good read, and if you have a leaning toward North Carolina writers as I do, you may end up wanting to add this to your collecton as I have, next to "Rough Road Home" and "Christ-Haunted Landscape" and "Best Stories from the South".