But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.

When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children

I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.

William Ferris has long reigned as the unimpeachable source of the entire southern experience. His work on southern folklore and the composition of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture have made him both legendary and necessary. His book, The Storied South , is a love song to the South Bill helped illuminate. It's a crowning achievement of his own storied career.

My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.

Of the Yamacraw children, I can say little. I don't think I changed the quality of their lives significantly or altered the inexorable fact that they were imprisoned by the very circumstance of their birth.

Through sports a coach can offer a boy a secret way to sneak up on the mystery that is manhood.