The stories in the book are set in the harsh countryside of the Jalisco region where Rulfo was raised, with the context of post-Mexican Revolution events such as the distribution of ejidos after the land reform and the Cristero War.

[5] One review of these stories praises these seventeen tales of rural folk because they "prove Juan Rulfo to be one of the master storytellers of modern Mexico....".

The reviewer also noted that Rulfo In his introduction to the Texas edition, translator George D. Schade describes some of the stories as long sustained interior monologues ("Macario", "We're very poor", "Talpa", "Remember"), while in other stories that may have otherwise been essentially monologues dialogues are inserted ("Luvina", "They have Given Us the Land" and ""Anacleto Morones").

This helps to establish the sickly atmosphere surrounding the idiot boy, who is gnawed by hunger and filled with the terror of hell, and is protected, as well as exploited, by his Godmother and the servant girl Felipa.

The story is narrated by a man described as "the last inhabitant of the Hill of the Mothers-in-law", a village formerly controlled by the feared criminals and now-deceased Torrico brothers.

The story starts with the line, “Everything is going from bad to worse here.” The narrator speaks about the hardships that his family has recently had to endure, which included the death of his Aunt Jacinta the previous week.

The town “emerges from the fog laden with dew,” and the narrator describes a number of elements that serve to obscure it from view: clouds, rising steam and black smoke from the kitchens.

The story begins at what is technically its end, with a description of Natalia throwing herself into her mother’s arms and sobbing upon their return to Zenzontla.

[12] The story begins with an epigraph from a popular ballad, the lines “They’ve gone and killed the bitch / but the puppies still remain…” This refers to the way that the spark that began the Mexican Revolution created successive movements, which were often quite independent of its original impulses and were often difficult to bring to heel.

The story is about a man named Juvencio Nava, who pleads with his son Justino to intervene on his behalf in order to stop his execution by firing squad.

It is told in the third person by an omniscient narrator, who describes the flight of a Cristero soldier, Feliciano Ruelas, from a successful ambush of federal troops.

[15] The story opens with a father’s request that his son Ignacio tell him if he can hear any dogs or see any lights in the distance, as he is very nearly deaf and blind.

He grows frustrated with his son, revealing that Ignacio was a criminal who began robbing others due to their family's poverty, using the money to buy food.

The son says the father can not understand his family’s suffering because he sells “skyrockets and firecrackers and gunpowder,” which are popular whenever there are holiday celebrations.

He is prideful and jealous, and though he does not confess to the crime directly, the repeated references to a pile of stones indicate the place of rest of the body of Lucatero's father-in-law, Anacleto Morones.