Mary Ward Brown of Marion, Alabama, is probably the finest Alabama writer of literary fiction practicing today. She postponed her writing career most of a lifetime, first dedicating herself to careers as wife and mother and then, in her full maturity, exploding onto the scene with her first collection of stories, Tongues of Flame, in 1987. This volume of work, set in Alabama’s Black Belt, won the 1987 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lillian Smith Award.

Then there was what seemed to her new fans an intolerable wait. Brown published a handful of stories in assorted magazines and now has collected these and a few more in her second book, It Wasn’t All Dancing.

This slim volume is comprised of eleven stories of about thirteen pages each. The stories are intense. Each one brought this reader to a full stop. Each one must be savored and digested before it is possible to move on.

In the opening story, the title story, Ms. Brown hits several of her major themes: the relation of man to woman, husband to wife, of black southerners to white, of the generations, in this case mother and daughter to each other, and the irresistible passage of time, which leads, of course, to mortality and death.

Rose Merriweather lies in bed, old, dying, lucid for long periods and then lapsing into a kind of coma for hours or even days at a time. When alert, she has plenty of time to examine her life, and she mainly finds herself wanting. As a young woman, she had been spoiled, flighty, frivolous. Her middle-aged daughter is not attentive or even loving. She threatens Rose with a "change-up," meaning the nursing home. Rose tells Henrietta, her black nurse, "Do you know what she remembers most about me, as a child? . . . A few smells, she says. Gardenias from my corsages. Hot cheese in the canapés I served at parties . . . Chanel Number Five as I went out the door, then alcohol and cigarettes when I came in her room late at night."

Henrietta asks about Rose’s marriage. Had she loved her husband? Had she pleasured him at night? Pleasured him? Rose was taken by surprise: "I guess I did, sometimes."

"You didn’t cheat on him, did you?"

Rose doesn’t answer, for it had all been flirting, except once. Rose has fine china, Spode, and silver and crystal, but no cash. She has Henrietta dig out a ring Rose had never worn publicly, given by "Him," the man she truly loved but did not leave her husband and daughter for. He had a wife and three children. She had her little family. Now the sale of the ring might bring a few more weeks of independence.

this is a strong story on a strong topic: the summing up of one’s own life. Rose contemplates. "She’d done a few things right. She’d stood by Allen till the end and hadn’t faltered." As he is dying, year after year, unable to speak, "his eyes had lit up when she came into the room. It hadn’t been all dancing."

Set in the Black Belt, this story could have taken place in Dublin, Ireland and been in Joyce’s Dubliners. Brown generates emotion without sentimentality or melodrama. Great fiction is like that. Elemental. Simple lines. Brown is indeed the Chekhov of Alabama.

As the large sapphire carries so much meaning in "Dancing," it is a birthday cake that stands as the endowed object in the story of that name. In this piece another older woman, Fern Wilson, has buried her unfaithful husband whom she loved dearly. After long years of widowhood, Fern has me 69-year-old Dr. Charles Albright from Decatur, Alabama, and they care for each other. He is to visit that very day, his birthday, when her oldest friend dies. Fern must attend Sadie at her home, at the funeral home and the graveside, cancelling Charles’ visit. But she does NOT take the cake to Sadie’s house. As she returns from the funeral, the next day, her phone is ringing. Charles still wants to visit. He will propose, we know, and although Fern feels that she must have been inadequate to her first husband, Robert, she will accept. They will share his birthday cake, the name of which is Dark Decadence. It sits on her her counter, "pristine white over that dark chocolate heart."

What does it mean, the cake? It means time, it means: make a wish and have it granted. It means seize the day, it means many happy returns. In Mary Ward Brown’s fiction, objects vibrate with meanings, not just one, but many, an endless vibration.

Rose in "It Wasn’t All Dancing" asks Henrietta to call her Miss Rose or Ma’am. Henrietta declines. "No. I just call you Mrs. Merriweather right on . . . That other stuff all over now." Indeed after the civil rights movement a lot of stuff is happily All Over Now. But along with all that has been gained, Brown suggests, some things have been lost. Brown explores the old relationships, in "Swing Low," specifically between the black servant William and his white mistress Miss Ward. He is her servant. She is his protectress. She protects William from the wrath of Mr. Ward when William shows up hung over or even when he steals. It is clear he is devoted to her, but how deeply isn’t known until Miss Ward dies and William is genuinely bereft. "I ain’t got nobody now, he says . . . Nobody. He repeated. Not in this world." And every reader knows it is true.

Of course, no review can cover all eleven stories. In some, class distinctions are explored, tenderly, for this is also sensitive territory. In others, the place of religion is examined. In "Alone in a Foreign Country," an Alabama girl finds herself frightened in a hotel room in Moscow and the next day, takes a tour of Chekhov’s house.

Mary Ward Brown puts the signs up for those who can read them.