South Toward Home: Adventures and Misadventures in My Native Land

Reed’s collection of snappy columns from the Southern lifestyle magazine Garden & Gun makes for an inviting way to ease into summer reading, even for those who have never ventured below the Mason-Dixon line. She describes growing up in a rarified South, one that included impressive guests at family parties—William F. Buckley, for one—and debutante balls, but her writing transcends socioeconomic boundaries as easily as geographic ones. A top-notch storyteller, Reed relates early memories ranging from a case of adolescent heartbreak that resulted in her triumphant discovery of “the healing power of glamour,” to the complete neglect of her beloved first car. A Southern book would be incomplete without a discussion of food, and Reed does not disappoint, with nods to fried chicken, Kool-Aid pickles (aka the Koolickle), various pig parts, and the Delta tamale. Most memorable, perhaps, are Reed’s stories about entertaining, from “insanely over the top” boat rides on the Mississippi to a raucous Thanksgiving celebration pairing turkey with mint juleps. Reed is hilarious and charmingly irreverent, and her ability to capture an element of Southern life in a phrase (“God, Gators and Gumbo” for Louisiana) or to describe, in a short sentence or two, a funny, sweet memory of 40 years ago, are the marks of a true talent. (June)