In the Morning Glow: Short Stories — Edition Insights

Second-Person Intimacy and the Child's Gaze

The consistent use of "you" in the excerpts is the collection's most distinctive formal feature. In "Grandfather," the child's physical interaction with the grandfather is rendered as a shared, almost ritualistic act: "when you had both feet in the soft middle of the vest, and your body was stiff, and your face was looking right up at the ceiling, Grandfather groaned down deep inside, and that was the sign that your walk was ended." This technique creates an immediate, sensory intimacy, but it also raises questions about memory and perspective. The narrator seems to be an adult recollecting childhood, yet the voice stays firmly in the child's limited understanding—for instance, the sun "followed Grandfather wherever he went, till he passed into the house at supper-time. Then the sun went down and it was night." The excerpts do not reveal whether this narrative stance is sustained throughout all five stories, but in the ones provided, it is a unifying device that blurs the line between reader and protagonist.

Domestic Rituals and the Absence of the Outside World

Despite the catalog subject "United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century," the excerpts depict a household remarkably insulated from historical events. The only hint of a wider world is the toy soldier's military language—"Captain Jinks," "Grenadier Guards," "commissary chocolates"—which is purely imaginative. The adult world is represented by Grandfather's corn-cob pipe, Mother's nap, and Old Man Stubbs's chewing tobacco, but these details are filtered through a child's moral framework: "it was not pleasant to kiss Old Man Stubbs, and Mother said that chewing tobacco was a filthy habit." The stories are set in a timeless domestic sphere where the most dramatic event is a toy soldier's fall from grace after being found "flat on his face, under the dinner-table." Readers expecting social commentary or period detail will instead find a microcosm of family life, with the child's perception shaping every scene.

Mock-Heroic Play and the Boundaries of Reality

The longest excerpt, from "The Toy Grenadier," demonstrates Gilson's skill at treating children's play with mock-epic gravity. The toy soldier's battles are described in military terms: "a monstrous glassy had struck him fairly in the legs," and his subsequent decline is narrated as a tragic fall from discipline. The humor arises from the contrast between the inflated language and the mundane reality—the "ambulance corps of Grandfather and Uncle Ned" and the "Tool Chest Hospital." Yet the story also touches on deeper themes: the soldier's insistence on maintaining military posture even when drunk ("his heels were close together, his toes turned out") suggests a meditation on duty and identity. The excerpts do not resolve whether the toy soldier is ultimately retired or redeemed, but the blend of affection and irony is consistent. This story, like the others, relies on the reader's willingness to accept the child's world as serious, without condescension.

Readers approaching In the Morning Glow should set aside expectations of plot-driven fiction or historical panorama. The collection rewards attention to small, precise observations—the feel of a vest, the taste of pipe juice, the click of toy heels. The second-person narration may feel disorienting at first, but it is the key to the book's quiet power. For those interested in early twentieth-century domestic life, the stories offer a subjective, interior view, not a documentary one. The humor is gentle, the sentiment controlled, and the world deliberately small.

Reading this, I remembered my own grandfather’s clock—its patient tick beside a sunlit chair—and how the second person made me feel like a child again. That quiet ache returned with The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories — Story, Setting & Ideas, where Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s New Orleans held the same tender gravity, a world observed so softly it felt like a secret I’d always known.