A new Ellen Gilchrist collection is always an event for the legions of her loyal readers. In I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting with My Daddy, Gilchrist writes again of one of her most beloved characters, with the hilarity, wisdom, and poignancy that marks all of her fiction. Here, a clutch of stories are told in the voice of Rhoda–as a child, as a divorced mother of three sons, and as an old woman, recalling the curse and blessing of being the only daughter of Big Dudley. In “The Abortion,” a young girl whose father is dying and the boy who loves her struggle with clashing notions of what makes life meaningful. In “Remorse,” a small town hairdresser revisits the last days of his best friend’s life and what he might have done to save her. There is a rich vein of sorrow here, but Gilchrist lightens the burden with a grasp of how both folly and grace are born of love. As her characters, both new and familiar, spin out their unlikely fates, Gilchrist proves once again that there is no other Southern writer quite like her.

Rhoda Manning is home for the summer in Dunleith, Alabama. In an age of conformity and innocence, the 19-year-old is tired of conventional virtue. Resisting her easy life, she yearns for meaning and beauty, profundity and mystery. Impulsive and adventurous, she attends a midnight meeting of the Klan, and then repelled, hurls herself into the civil rights movement.

Half-conscious of her unmet needs and desires, she vacillates between the world of her family and that of her dreams, flirting with danger, pressing against the edge — with disturbing and tragic consequences.

A New York City magazine editor and novelist returns home to the South when her closest childhood friend falls ill–and finds herself forced to choose between pursuing her career and rekindling her relationship with the man she has long considered the love of her life.

“This is the story of a group of people who had a bizarre and unexpected thing happen to them. Their psychiatrist went crazy and started injecting himself with drugs. The most useful and dependable man in their lives became a maniac in the true sense of the word.”

So begins the The Cabal, the hilarious novella that forms the centerpiece of Ellen Gilchrist’s sparkling new collection of stories. Dr. Jim Jaspers’s patients include all the most prominent citizens of Jackson, Mississippi–wealthy businessmen, wealthy socialites, even the governor’s daughter. Unfortunately for them, their beloved psychiatrist suddenly goes mad himself, revealing their deepest secrets and embarrassing misdeeds to anyone who will listen. The whole town goes crazy: some want to lock him up or, failing that, arrange a convenient accident. Others try to protect him. The rest are busily revising their personal histories. The result is a hilarious, bitingly ironic tale, revealing that our deepest secrets invariably are those best known by others.

The five stories that follow are classic Gilchrist, including another witty and wise account of Miss Crystal by Traceleen. In one story, a happily married nurse finds herself pursued by an old high-school boyfriend. In another, a grandmother makes a cross-country pilgrimage from Kansas City to Mississippi to see her family. From a literary writer struggling in Hollywood to the mysterious appearance of thirty-six gold coins in a small Southern town, these stories will delight both old and new Gilchrist fans. With all the warmth, wit and humor her readers have come to expect from her, The Cabal and Other Stories.