I'm reading Robert Goolrick's Heading Out to Wonderful. It's set in the postwar years in small town Virginia, and a somewhat mysterious young man, Charlie, has chosen to settle in a small town in Virginia, and neither the townspeople nor the reader knows why (at least not 102 pages in, in any case). There's a hint or two that trouble might be brewing, but until it does, I'm enjoy the small-town atmosphere, the author's way with prose and his interesting characters.
One such character, Claudie, is an eccentric woman who lives on the edge of town and is something of a miracle worker when it comes to dressmaking; there's also a striking young women (I imagine her being played by Scarlett Johansson) who was raised deep in the hills and was virtually sold to the richest man in town by her impoverished father. This character, Sylvan, longs to live the life she sees depicted in the movies. To that end, she has lost her hillbilly dialect by listening for hours on end to the radio ("The Loves of Helen Trent" is a particularly strong influence on her).
I suspect Sylvan may prove to be Charlie's downfall (or he hers), but that's only conjecture.
Anyway, there's lots of period detail and the author has a literary (but not overbearingly so) style that is pleasing. I recommend it as at least a library title, and it might even be worth purchasing to some here.
