Constance Fenimore Woolsons unusual vantage point earns her a distinct place in the canon of American literature. She was a northern author, but she lived in the Reconstruction South from 1874 to 1880 and wrote fiction that depicted the impoverished region. The genre of her work is as significant as her outsiders perspective. Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches, which she composed while living in St. Augustine, Florida, is a short-story cycle. Simply put, the narratives are connected by recurring locales, characters, and themes. Amidst the humid tropics of Florida and the postbellum environs of Georgia and the Carolinas, Southerners collide with visitors from New England who are portrayed as stoic peacemakers. A marginalized African-American or Minorcan presence and a pervading sense of defeat linger in the shadows of the action. In effect, Rodman the Keeper captures the disorientation of a frontier in transition, and as each story echoes irretrievable loss, the continuous cycle develops.