Book Review

I’m not a regular reader of “Southern Living” magazine—save the occasional recipe for shrimp and grits if I’m feeling homesick—and I don’t believe I’ve ever picked up an issue of “Garden & Gun.” But the magazine pieces that make up Rick Bragg’s latest book make me want to buy a subscription. Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South is a collection of personal columns by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, who is probably best known for his memoir, All Over but the Shoutin’ . Bragg grew up dirt poor among the ridgelines of northeastern Alabama, and his love for the place shines through in this collection, which sparkles with the wit and tenderness of a Pat Conroy novel. Topics range from Harper Lee to hot chicken, fire ants to Fat Tuesday, and “grandmothers with their arms full of fat babies and their giant purses stuffed with butterscotch candies and Juicy Fruit.” He recalls the perils of trying to travel in winter—“You do not really fly out of Birmingham,”