Jan Fink's stories are drawn from her life experiences and the people she has met along the way. She allows her characters to channel their stories in their own voices. Stories that involve what it is to be human and capable of greed, hatred, brutality and even murder. Her characters take us through the struggles of the human capacity for good and evil, the capacity to love, human frailty, the burden of guilt and sin and realizing the dark side of their own nature. From Anna fleeing her eccentric Southern family, Olivia's childhood memoir, Damon Pierce's knowledge, John Love's quest for Clara Jean, Little Bill's Greenland to Pauley and Dylan's driving lesson, a mother's story of abuse, the long-winded George McNutt, Buzz the collector and Archie's question, they are each in their own way searching for meaning and freedom. "Tales from a Strange Southern Lady" is fashioned with sentences that artfully paint perfect pictures and a sharp, wicked sense of humor. At the same time they carry that sort of Southern innocence and naivete that makes the characters so likable and the bad ones so hateable."