Safe from the Neighbors is a novel of unusual richness and depth, one that's as wise about the small shocks within a marriage as it is about the troubled history of Mississippi. Steve Yarbrough is a formidably talented novelist, shuttling between the past and present with a grace that feels effortless.

I write about kids growing up, I write a lot about schools and parents, and all of my experiences with those things have been suburban experiences.

If anything, he seemed a little lonely, all too ready to open his heart at the slightest sign of interst.

It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.

Every minute we were together, I felt like I was wandering in the dark through a strange house, groping for a light switch. And then, whenever I found one and turned it on, the bulb was dead.

He'd never had to make the adjustments and compromises other people accepted early in their romantic careers; never had a chance to learn the lesson that Sarah taught him everyday--that beauty was only a part of it, and not even the most important part, that there were transactions between people that occurred on some mysterious level beneath the skin, or maybe even beyond the body.

Maybe that's what we look for in the people we love, the spark of unhappiness we think we know how to extinguish.