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Lee Smith's body of work examines the influence of significant factors--such as place, memory, art, tradition, social expectation, media, religion, history, and story--on personal identity. Enriching her treatment of the subject, she explores this issue always with a consciousness of the self's ultimate indeterminable. In twelve novels, Smith draws us into a rigorous exploration of the self, the location and essence of which are often sought in a landscape of shifting and imagined markers. "I have been so many people": A Study of Lee Smith's Novels examines Smith's novels, exploring the social commentary within in a manner that any reader can understand.