A Summons to Memphis

Summary

A middle-aged New York editor is called back to Memphis by his sisters, who want help blocking their elderly father's plans to remarry, prompting a slow excavation of an old family wound stretching back to the family's forced move from Nashville decades earlier. Taylor's measured, conversational prose patiently exposes the hierarchies and resentments of Upper South gentility. The novel is a representative late masterpiece of his quiet, story-driven art.