Come in at the Door is the first book in Alabama author William March’s “Pearl County” collection of novels and short fiction.

Following the success of March's first novel, Company K, about World War I, the author began to explore his own childhood in south Alabama in his fiction.

In it, the author interweaves a traditional linear narrative with diary entries from Chester's aunt's journal as well as numerous short fable-like entries by a character called “The Whisperer.”[2] Chester Hurry lives with his widowed father, Robert, and an African American domestic servant, Mitty.

Following an illness not long after that event, young Chester is sent to live with his mother's family in Reedyville, which is the setting for many of the stories in the Pearl County series.

Chester forms a close relationship with Bushrod, who's been left single when his wife, a sexually promiscuous woman in Reedyville, leaves him.

Chester reaches adulthood and begins work in a business office, an experience that closely mirrors March's own life in Mobile as a young man.