byShenandoah. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1976 and was inducted as a Virginia Cultural Laureate in 1986. Hoffman was awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 1992 and the O. Henry Prize in 1996. He was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 1998, and was a recipient of their Hillsdale Prize for fiction in the same year. Tidewater Blood won the Dashiell Hammett award in 1999. Hoffman has received two honorary D. Litt. degrees, one from Hampden-Sydney College in 1980 and another from Washington and Lee University in 1995.

Major Works

Hoffman's sense of place is paramount in his works; almost all of them are set in West Virginia, Virginia, or the Chesapeake Bay area. His work shares much of the outlook and many idiosyncrasies of other Southern Agrarian authors, yet his themes are universal and strongly influenced by the circumstances of his own life. Critics divide his novels into three categories, those concerned mostly with the following: war, the culture of Virginia and West Virginia, and spirituality. In both his novels and his short stories, Hoffman's characters attempt to define themselves, search for distant or unknown fathers, cope with random violence, examine the devastating effects of war, or question the rampant materialism of the last half of the twentieth century. The Trumpet Unblown tells the story of a young Virginian, Tyree Jefferson Shelby, who altruistically volunteers for service, but in the course of observing unspeakable brutality and venality on both sides loses all faith in humanity. Days in the Yellow Leaf recalls the inevitability of Aristotelian tragedy in the unfolding story of the protagonist, Tod Young. A conscientious objector during World War II, his father considers him a traitor and coward, yet Tod remains in the town of his childhood. In his determination to be his own man and to avoid hurting others, he loses everything except, in the end, reconciliation and mutual understanding with his father. Yancy's War depicts the life of an inept man whose incompetence takes not only his own life but the lives of the men under his command. Hoffman recalls his own West Virginia heritage in The Dark Mountains, a rich novel about the coal mining industry during the rise of the labor union movement. Hoffman traces three generations of a family, showing their rise, decline, and ultimate accommodation to circumstances. In A Walk to the River, a minister stands falsely accused of committing adultery with the wife of the town's leading citizen. Jackson LeJohn, the chair of the church's board, is charged with overseeing the investigation and congregational meetings that result in the conviction of an innocent man and in the course of discharging his duties, he discovers important things about himself.

Hoffman writes repeatedly about moral decay and rampant materialism in modern American society, a concern that led to three novels sometimes categorized as philosophical or religious in theme—The Land that Drank the Rain (1982), Godfires (1985), and Furors Die (1990). The Land That Drank the Rain is a modern day retelling of the tribulations of Job. The protagonist, Claytor Carson, has been living a dissolute life in California but returns to his roots in the Cumberland Mountains seeking spiritual renewal. A character named Vestil Skank, alternately sympathetic and repugnant, is Carson's tormentor and ultimate savior. As Carson attempts to redeem Skank from a life of squalor and degradation, he learns that only through self-sacrifice, personal courage, and interaction with others can he experience redemption. Furors Die traces the maturation and relationship of two boys who come from different socioeconomic circumstances but whose lives are irrevocably intertwined. Wylie, born wealthy and given a Southern gentleman's pedigree, and Amos, poor but talented, experience a reversal of fortunes. As the transformation in their lots occurs, their true characters are revealed, permitting self-understanding and growth. Tidewater Blood, covers Hoffman's entire fictional geography. Several members of an aristocratic Virginia family are murdered at a family reunion. Suspicion falls immediately on Charles LeBlanc, the black sheep of the family. A disgraced Vietnam veteran, dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, LeBlanc has been living hermit-like in a swamp. As law enforcement officers attempt to capture him, he embarks on a quest to his family's roots in West Virginia, where he must come to terms with his family's past in order to prove his innocence. Conflicting cultural values and the power of the past over events in the present, themes that Hoffman explores repeatedly in his works, are strong elements of Tidewater Blood. Hoffman's spare prose, setting, and central themes are evident in his four short story collections. The stories in Virginia Reels are deeply pessimistic and reflective of Hoffman's Calvinist heritage. The stories in By Land, By Sea (1988) and Follow Me Home (1994) are less dark than those in the first collection, but describe characters caught in fateful forces that have moved beyond their ability to either recognize or control. In contrast to the first two volumes of short stories, Follow Me Home contains protagonists with strong values—admirable human beings who have attained innocence through experience. Doors (1999) contains ten linked stories that illustrate the fictional town of Tobaccoton, Virginia, which some critics have compared to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County.

Critical Reception

Although long favored by critics, Hoffman's works have languished among readers, except for a small following of devoted fans. Though the nationally esteemed Sewanee Review has, as of 1991, published more short stories by William Hoffman than by any other author, his literary reputation has been slow to extend beyond his home state and Southern vicinity. His supporters note that the range and richness of his work, while confined in setting, is universal in exploring the psychological processes of self-discovery, maintenance of ethical values, and the means to redemption. The Trumpet Unblown has been favorably compared to Ernest Hemingway's great war novels and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, and the characters of The Dark Mountains have been favorably compared to those in Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. While some critics see profundity, even mythic power, in the sparse quality of his narrative style, Hoffman's terse diction has been faulted by some as overly simplistic. Despite such criticism and a long career of relative underrecognition, Hoffman's two recent mystery novels, Tidewater Blood and Blood and Guile (2000), have earned him a wider popular readership. His thematic concerns, reiterated in all his works, link him to the tradition instituted by such important Southern authors as Warren, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor.