On the hot dry first Sunday of August, three generations of Granny Vaughn’s descendants gather at her home in Banner, Mississippi, for a family reunion in celebration of her ninetieth birthday. The action covers two days, but in memory many decades, for the members of this enormous family are wonderful raconteurs. Through a myriad of raised voices we enter their world – both present and past – and as this magnificently orchestrated novel rises to its crescendo, Eudora Welty subtly reveals that battles seemingly lost can also be secretly won.