WHERE THE MUSIC WAS by Charles...

WHERE THE MUSIC WAS by Charles East (University of Georgia Press: $12.95; 180 pp., paperback original). The editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction series, East writes understated stories about the changing life in flyspeck towns in the Deep South. Shifts in population and changes in racial attitudes leave genteel, aging characters complaining that the town no longer feels like home. East mixes a nostalgia for the passing of a gracious way of life with an awareness of the limits a small town imposes.