When Leigh Wilson sets her pen to it, she can inscribe grim parables of pretentious morality and outright evil that will curdle your blood.

—Doris Grumbach, Georgia Review

Short stories with a corrosive, bent, off-beat quality brighten From the Bottom Up. Characters one can't easily forget . . . Wilson's work has a Tennessee regionalism that shifts to universal dimensions.

—Malcolm Boyd, Los Angeles Times

Wilson has a way with words and a way with people and she puts them together marvelously well . . . Vivid, often eccentric characters . . . Unusual and memorable.

—Publishers Weekly

Wilson equals the uneasy, elegiac grace of J.D. Salinger's short stories.

—Commonwealth

The view of the world is 'from the bottom up,' as sturdy and unsentimental as country music . . . notable and worthy addition to collections of short fiction.

—M. Soete, Library Journal

Leigh Allison Wilson is a very talented short-story teller. . . . She cares with gentle sadness for her curious Southerners, and she paints them with vivid rue. Her talent is striking, her first book superb and successful.

—Joseph J. Feeney, Best Sellers

She writes of simple people with simple ideas that somehow go awry. Wilson is carving out her own share of the Southern territory and she hones it exceedingly well. Her characters are funny and exasperating and entertaining.

—Nancy Shapiro, Nancy Shapiro, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Wilson is most impressive and shows herself to be a writer for all regions.

—Virginia Quarterly Review