The End of California

The End of California
Publishing House: Knopf
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: End of California, The
In his first book, a story collection called Family Men, Steve Yarbrough drew a portrait of Indianola, Miss., as the kind of town where men worry that their wives are having affairs with country music singers and where football scholarships mean a lot. In the five works of fiction he has published since, Yarbrough has drawn this town from all different perspectives ' sometimes sending his characters as far away as Europe so that they can look back on it. Yarbrough's latest novel may be called The End of California, but it, too, takes place in the Mississippi Delta. The main character left the Deep South to play college football; two decades later, now a doctor, he comes back to Mississippi in disgrace and finds his hometown just as claustrophobic and full of drunks and nosy neighbors as when he left it. Even if this doesn't sound like home to you, Yarbrough makes it fun to visit for a while.