These seven previously unpublished tales were penned by Thomas Lanier Williams of Missouri before he became Tennessee. His voice is unmistakable as he captures private moments in the lives of urban and rural Americans surviving the Great Depression, and the reliable idiosyncrasies and quiet dignity of Williams’s eccentrics are already present. Consider the diminutive octogenarian of “The Caterpillar Dogs,” who may have just met her match in a pair of laughing Pekinese that refuse to surrender to her demands; the retired evangelist in “Every Friday Nite Is Kiddies Nite,” who receives a message from God to move to St.…