LEAH, NEW HAMPSHIRE by Thomas Williams...

LEAH, NEW HAMPSHIRE by Thomas Williams (Graywolf: $12.50; 285 pp.). An old-fashioned solidity marks the 15 stories in this collection of the National Book Award-winning writer’s work. At various times during his career, Williams returned to the fictional New England town of Leah, to examine some aspect of life there. “The Old Dancers” is an affectionate vision of an aging couple savoring their last years together; in “The Buck in Troteville’s,” a stag that blunders into a local department becomes a symbol of the passing of the freer, less urbanized way of life that gentrification is supplanting in New Hampshire.