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It is still a comfort to come back from traveling, with my random memories like a display in some Victorian museum of miscellany, to a home full of people whose lives I know so well I can tell the story of every missing finger and call every old lady's cat by name.

Bailey White's colorful slices of eccent... More

It is still a comfort to come back from traveling, with my random memories like a display in some Victorian museum of miscellany, to a home full of people whose lives I know so well I can tell the story of every missing finger and call every old lady's cat by name.

Bailey White's colorful slices of eccentric Southern life have long delighted listeners of National Public Radio's All Things Considered, on which she is a regular commentator. Now, in Sleeping at the Starlite Motel, her first collection since the ABBY-nominated Mama Makes Up Her Mind, she explores how places everywhere affect our lives, from her humid hometown in Georgia to a one-room school in Vermont.

Fans old and new will delight in Bailey White's tour of mansions with leaky roofs, hot springs, and "the kind of dreams you dream at the Starlite Motel." She takes us on adventures as mild as drinking tea with the Rose Queen of 1931 and as risky as deciding to teach first grade. She introduces us to her cousin Mandon, who wants to reunite the family's far-flung Chippendale chairs, and she tries to explain how, when she was assigned to computer training, she ended up at the dog track.

Sometimes hilarious, sometimes touching, Bailey White's readings of her unabridged stories are always rich with perception and grace.