EMBLEMS OF CONDUCT by Donald Windham...

EMBLEMS OF CONDUCT by Donald Windham (The University of Georgia Press: $15.95, 210 pp.). A noted novelist and editor, Windham recalls growing up in Atlanta during the Depression, watching his once-prominent family gradually slide into poverty. His impractical mother proved unable to cope with her changed status and was forced to rely on her stern relatives.

When the massive family home was demolished, Windham kept fragments of a stained glass window as a souvenir of fading grandeur. Originally published in 1963, “Emblems of Conduct” offers a vision of the genteelly suppressed Southern life 50 years ago.