Mr. Leath, a former small-town banker, was first elected to Congress in 1978 and retired in 1991.

More out of boredom than lust, the narrator, who is married to a small-town banker, has an affair with an indiscreet local doctor.

"It's a hard business for a small-town banker to understand," Updegraff said.

The daughter of a small-town banker, Ms. Davies told her niece that she had "always felt a hankering to go to New York."

In the early 1980's, a small-town banker could offer Vern Sager only a wan better-luck-next-year pep talk and a loan that charged 14 percent interest.

I wonder what Great-uncle Earl would think of it now-that respectable small-town banker, who left the place to me, of all people?

Mr. Connolly left decisions to local officers and small-town bankers were making big-city deals.

A small-town banker does not find his job fulfilling and suspects that his marriage may be unfulfilled too, because there are no children.

So did the feed suppliers, farmhands and small-town bankers.

He was raised in a close-knit family, his mother a schoolteacher, his father a small-town banker and lover of poetry.