A Southern Season: Rural Stories

Tomato sandwiches. Tobacco barns. Cooking collards. A shopping list left on a desk for 40 years at a deceased grandparent's house. Traditions that die as families age. What it means to "be country." Pig pickins'. Splitting firewood. Minor league baseball. Redneck snow days. Places that you can't go back again—sometimes good, sometimes not.

All of these nostalgic and not-so-nostalgic stories from a rural upbringing are colliding with the New(er) South and are at risk of being lost from the culture.

A Southern Season: Rural Stories is a collection of short stories about the food, lifestyle, language, and quirks of the rural South and the dramatic changes that have taken place in just one generation.

These true stories are designed to be enjoyed independently, but interconnect to tell the story of the author who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in eastern North Carolina, before the Internet, but with plenty of things to occupy his mind and body.

Those who grew up in the country will instantly connect and those who didn't can follow the author down the two-track path to experience it for themselves.

Michael K. Brantley is the author of four nonfiction books, including former Amazon No. 1 in Nonfiction in Memoir, Memory Cards: Portraits from a Rural Journey. He also wrote Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate, about his great-great-grandfather who served in both armies during the Civil War and was involved in a bizarre murder. Brantley has worked as an award-winning journalist and photographer and teaches English, Creative Writing, and Communications at Barton College. He lives on part of the former family farm with his wife and children in eastern North Carolina.