Sherwood Anderson writes of a small Ohio town near the turn of the 20th Century. Machines have not yet come to dominate agriculture and industry, a contrast that is delivered in the narrative.

Winesburg, Ohio is structured as a series of what at first feel like distinct short stories, each having its own beginning, middle, and end. Each tells the story of an inhabitant of the town, of the young men and women discovering love for the first time, of the priest dealing honestly with temptation for the first time.

As the stories weave on, the book becomes more solidly the story of the stories that lead George Willard, a young newspaper reporter from an unhappy family, to get the courage to leave town to seek success in the city.

Overall, Anderson does a great job of using the almost-but-not-quite-realist descriptions of the rural setting as a backdrop against which he plays with the human condition. In each of the "grotesques" as he called them is an aspect of humanity that we have each dealt with. Anderson's masterwork is a great read.