What’s Southern about sin? Read this book to find out

As Fennelly points out in her editor’s note, rarely do we see a story or film about a woman who goes “bad” and isn’t punished. In each of these stories, women may not be behaving the way society expects them to and they may be doing what’s technically “sinning” in religious terms, but as Fennelly writes, “such badness is good when it’s necessary to maintain the integrity of the soul.”