Mary Kuykendall goes back to her roots along the South Branch of the Potomac River in West Virginia for this collection of short stories based on characters struggling for survival in a world which appears indifferent as they face adverse and social conditions beyond their control. "River Roots"' stories interrelate to give one a total view of river valley life, then and now. In some ways, the Hampshire County she grew up in reminds her of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, in which man, in his essential nobility, sometimes repudiates himself in all his reprehensible weakness. But mostly she hopes she has captured some of Wendell Berry's love of land and the family farmer's innate respect for it.