In the first full-length critical analysis of Reynolds Price's writings to appear in more than a decade, James A. Schiff traces the development of one of America's most esteemed contemporary writers from the publication in 1962 of his awardwinning first novel, A Long and Happy Life, to the arrival in 1995 of the third volume of his Mayfield trilogy, The Promise of Rest.

Demonstrating how literary trends have often run counter to Price's career, Schiff argues that Price has remained committed to a bold personal vision that is unlike that of any other contemporary American writer.

Schiff provides extended coverage of Price's multivolume works - A Great Circle (the Mayfield trilogy) and the Mustian novels - along with readings of Kate Vaiden, the Tongues of Angels, Love and Work, and Blue Calhoun. He also considers Price's two volumes of memoirs: A Whole New Life, which documents his recovery from cancer, and Clear Pictures, the book which inspired the Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Guggenheim to direct a documentary about Price's life.

Through detailed analysis, Schiff sheds light on such signature aspects of Price's writing as his intense concern with family and love, his underlying belief in the presence of a universal design, his rich narrative voice, which is firmly rooted in the language and rhythms of his native North Carolina, and his depiction of a world of rural familiarity that contrasts with the urban disorientation and dislocation prevalent in the work of so many mid-to late-twentieth-century American novelists.