Cynthia and Harry Baird relocate to Pinehill during the prewar Depression years.  They flee Connecticut to escape his low paying job, her mounting debt and dangerous flirtations.  They hope to make a new life in the South where they will become rich and fall in love again.  The Bairds are viewed as a cross between rich movie stars and naive Yankees, but they are welcomed into the many social circles of the town they have decided to call home.

Told from multiple points of view and punctuated with authentic dialog, A Southern Exposure allows the reader an inner view into the intimate societies that develop among the cast of characters.  You’ll be on the inside track of all the gossip concerning their secret fantasies, illicit affairs, social standards, fears, betrayals, depression, alcoholism, and racial issues.

Alice Adams doesn’t back down from any of the subjects that most people want to skirt today.  Rather, she tackles them head on in all their unpleasantness and delivers a brilliant work of fiction blended with history and viewed through the lens of what it truly means to be Southern.