The Old Forest

The Old Forest, title story of The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) by Peter Taylor, a collection of 14 pieces representative of 50 years of the author’s fiction. The stories are set in the American South from the 1930s to the middle 1950s; seven were originally published in The New Yorker.

“The Old Forest,” like much of Taylor’s fiction, concerns upper-middle-class Southerners whose privileged, semiagrarian way of life is vanishing. The story is a memory piece in which the action is recalled by the narrator-protagonist after 50 years. On a snowbound day in 1937, one week prior to his marriage to the debutante Caroline Braxley, Nat Ramsey takes Lee Ann Deehart, a girl of “unknown origins,” for an innocent ride in his car. The car is involved in an accident, and Lee Ann runs away, disappearing into the old forest. Nat tells Caroline and her family about the incident. The Braxleys refuse to allow the wedding to take place until Lee Ann has been located and any hint of scandal has been dissipated.