September Song is a collection of stories and a full-length play, written over a span of fifteen years in the author's long writing career. The settings of the stories range from China to California and Vermont, the play, Guests of Summer, is set in Nebraska. Orville Prescott in the New York Times called one of the stories, "O'Hara's Creation, " "a provocative study of an artist lost in alcoholism, given an extra push downward by the monotony of his soldier life in China, and the fantastic mural he painted on the walls of a recreation hall.