These stories, set in rural Georgia, are rich with atmosphere, vivid imagery, and sensory detail: A conjurer commands the water and communes with spirit, a merciless mother chooses a man over her children, fierce women offer love as sharp as their barbs. Bradley’s South is strikingly familiar to me. I recognize the red earth, the opaque water of her lakes and floodwaters, the heaviness of the very air, but her characters’ voices are all their own, each unique and compelling and quintessentially of Georgia. Each time I revisit this book, I’m reminded of how place teaches each of us poetry.