In the 1950s, Borden Deal embarked upon a career as a professional writer of fiction. As a southerner, born in Mississippi and educated at the University of Alabama, Deal wanted to write about the South.

That section of the country has produced numerous icons of American literature, including – first and foremost – William Faulkner who won the Nobel Prize in 1949.

Members of the U.S. literary establishment usually classify Faulkner and numerous other southern writers – including Carson McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote and Eudora Welty – as being...