The Burial of the Guns

A Confederate battery, cut off at the end of the war and with no army left to surrender to, takes its guns up a mountain and buries them. Around that: Virginia after Appomattox, old soldiers, mortgaged land, and the world that ended. Page was born on a Virginia plantation and became the most popular voice of the Old South's afterlife; the title story is the best thing he wrote, and the sentiment elsewhere in his work is worth reading with your eyes open. Fifty-three plates by painters including Winslow Homer and Edvard Munch follow the mountain terrain of Page's Virginia, from burnt peaks and climbers resting to battle scenes.