"A one-hundred-and-fourteen-year old woman living alone; a deaf recluse, a Jewish alligator hunter and his New York wife; a gay African-American drummer; a woman accused of poisoning her husband; a homeless, transgendered person; a woman scarred by a dog attack; a Jewish shopkeeper with unfulfilled aspirations; a wife with an AIDS-afflicted husband. The twenty-one linked stories of Strangers and Sojourners bear loving witness to the diverse and vital rural culture of the Lowcountry of South Carolina. In strongly-voiced stories the inhabitants of Coosawaw County - black and white, Jewish and Christian, gay, transgendered, and straight, poor and middle-class - bump up against one another, trying to cope with racial, gender, economic, religious and others, less effable, differences. As each one struggles to wrest meaning from the tragic events of their lives, they create novel and lively views of God, the world, and justice that sustain them in their confusion and grief."--BOOK JACKET.