A Serigamy of Stories

In this memoir, a child's recollections of her family and warm home life are lovingly preserved in a front-porch ambience. Windham, who frequently participates in oral storytelling sessions around the country, grew up in a small Alabama town in the early part of this century. She was surrounded by offbeat adults in those years, among them a doughty aunt, who was the town's formidable postmistress, and a circuit-riding Baptist-preacher grandfather. They were fodder for legends within the family, as well as story-creators themselves. As Windham weaves her memories there are digressions into tales that mark the castes of a bygone South, tales that move in slow cadence and bring to life a family that accommodated all members in their entertaining oddities. The word ""serigamy"" is, according to the author, a family coinage, used through the generations to indicate ""a goodly number,"" and the word aptly applies as well to this charming retrospective.