Rick Bragg's South

Author Rick Bragg & his mother, from the May 2012 issue of Southern Living

I get a little thrill when my latest issue of Southern Living magazine gets slid through the mail slot on my porch. Granted, this wasn't always the case: the Southern Living of my youth never really appealed to me, with its pastel-colored covers of cakes and table settings, its interior seemingly directed at ladies closer to my Grandmama's age. But the Southern Living of the past couple of years (perhaps longer) is a horse of a different color.

After some editorial changes--and the fold of Cottage Living, my formerly favorite "home" magazine--Southern Living has become something that very much appeals to me, a modern Southern woman in my 30s: it's cool, colorful, fun, and fresh, with vignettes of great writing that curl my toes.

My favorite spot in the magazine: "Southern Journal," recently taken over by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Bragg. This is a section that used to be filled by freelancers, a place I dreamed of one day seeing my writing. When Southern Living stopped using freelancers a few years ago, I was frustrated and sad that the chance had been lost to me.

But in stepped Bragg, a storyteller as real and scarred and soulful as the Southern landscape. I've put away my disappointment and petty writer's jealousies as I've quickly fallen in love with each and every piece he writes in the "Southern Journal" section, located on the last page of each issue.

If you haven't picked up the May 2012 issue, you should--Southerner or not, writer or not. It's heartbreaking and elegant, painful and immediately warm--like a grown-up sip of Jack Daniels. And it's about a South that's fast disappearing, though the remnants remain. And though Bragg is much older than I am, I can feel my own memories--some very different from his--surround me as I read his words, thick as early August heat in the air. So much of what he says, too, seems pertinent to me... especially as I cast my ballot in local elections this morning.

Though the piece itself isn't available yet on the magazine web site, it's called "My Brother's Garden," and I had to pass along a taste.

Here's a bit from the middle:

"The South, like chiggers and divinity candy, is everlasting. It will always be, though it will not always be as we remember. The South of our childhoods rusts, peels, and goes away. Brush arbors have left no trace on it. Preachers who thrust ragged Bibles at bare rafters now shout politics from the pulpit. Civility, toward even those with whom we do not agree, is an heirloom. Quilts, the kind made for warmth instead of cash, as a thing of antiquity, their patterns a mystery slowly fading in an old woman's eyes. Young men can play 5,000 video games but cannot sharpen a pocket knife; lost are the men who tested their truck's electrical system by holding to a coil wire. I listen for the past, but I cannot hear it. The juke joints fall silent, cotton mills wind down to a final, solitary thread, and a last buck dancer shuffles off into the mountain mist. Then I see my brother Mark in his garden, and know that not everything must fade away."

Get thee a copy, reader. You'll enjoy it.

Literary Idols and Luck

There's a message from one of my literary idols on my cell phone right now. No kidding: this man is my favorite living writer--possibly my favorite writer of all time. I'm still hornswoggled by the fact that if I dial for my messages and push "2," his voice is there. And it's not a joke.

He's on my voicemail because I recently wrote him a letter, care of his literary agent, asking if he'd consider reading a review copy of KEOWEE VALLEY, and if he likes it, possibly offering a blurb. Honestly, I never in my wildest dreams--and as my husband and anyone who's had to share a room with me over the years can attest, they are wild--thought he'd respond. I never even thought he'd get the letter. My guess is that this particular gentleman receives mounds of fan mail each year, much of it from wannabe writers who are also fans. But I've been reading his work since I was 10 years old, worshipping the way he crafts words on the page for so very long, that when it came time for my first novel to be published, I had to take the chance.

I'd tell you his name, but I'm superstitious. (This is coming from the same girl who in high school didn't change her stinky-nasty-sweaty soccer socks until we lost a game, and offers up the same exact prayer before road trips that she's been repeating since age 15.) I really want him to like my novel. If he doesn't, I'll be okay, but I don't want anyone to know that. Let me just tell you that he's a modern Southern literary icon, that all his books are bestsellers and many of them made into movies. He's the voice of the South, at least to me. His writing sings and pulses and burns, and he's the literary touchstone of my South Carolina childhood.

There.

When I first listened to his message, I thought someone was playing a cruel joke on me. But as he kept speaking, I knew it was real. My legs literally went out from under me, and I sat in an ungainly lump on the floor in my house. I momentarily lost the power of speech. He said many things in his message, but one thing he did say was that I'd written a "terrific" letter, and that while he tried to avoid doing blurbs any more, when someone writes him a letter like that he has to read the novel.

There's a waterfall in Pisgah National Forest, near my home, called Courthouse Falls. It's about 50 feet high, and there's a deep pool at the bottom. It's dark in this part of the woods, even in daylight, and in summer everything is green, mossy, slick and growing. I jumped off those falls in near pitch-darkness for the first and only time, a little over a decade ago. Night was falling fast and deep as it does in the Southern woods, and all I could see as I curled my toes over slick rock and rotting leaves was the vague white of the water where it crashed into the pool at the bottom. God, I wanted to jump. I can hear the thunder of the falls in my ears and feel the thump of adrenaline in my blood, even now. I can still feel the frigid shock of that spring-fed water.

I'm learning, more and more with this book preparation-and-publication process, that it's necessary to go for it. To step out over the dark and the wide, even when it's scary. You never know what might happen.

Granted, when you jump off a waterfall, you're taking your life into your own hands. I don't necessarily recommend it, especially for the faint of heart. (And if my daughter ever comes across this post in her teen years I plan to deny, deny, deny.) But when you're a first-time author reaching out to your favorite published authors, seeking their approval and help, what's the worst that could happen? They say no. Or they don't answer at all.

It's still worth the plunge. Trust me.