Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South

From the author of the bestselling #ReadWithJenna/TODAY Show book club pick Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
 
For the past four years, Margaret Renkl’s columns have offered readers of The New York Times a weekly dose of natural beauty, human decency, and persistent hope from her home in Nashville. Now more than sixty of those pieces have been brought together in this sparkling new collection.
 
“People have often asked me how it feels to be the ‘voice of the South,’” writes Renkl in her introduction. “But I’m not the voice of the South, and no one else is, either.” There are many Souths — red and blue, rural and urban, mountain and coast, Black and white and brown — and no one writer could possibly represent all of them. In Graceland, At Last, Renkl writes instead from her own experience about the complexities of her homeland, demonstrating along the way how much more there is to this tangled region than many people understand.
 
In a patchwork quilt of personal and reported essays, Renkl also highlights some other voices of the South, people who are fighting for a better future for the region. A group of teenagers who organized a youth march for Black Lives Matter. An urban shepherd whose sheep remove invasive vegetation. Church parishioners sheltering the homeless. Throughout, readers will find the generosity of spirit and deep attention to the world, human and nonhuman, that keep readers returning to her columns each Monday morning.
 
From a writer who “makes one of all the world’s beings” (NPR), Graceland, At Last is a book full of gifts for Southerners and non-Southerners alike.

“If you’ve happened upon the poignant and off-road opinion pieces Renkl writes as a contributor to The New York Times, you already know that the natural world is something she closely observes and uses as a springboard to contemplate other, less tangible subjects... Her life story and her life’s passion intertwine, like a fence post and a trumpet vine.” Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

"From her home in Nashville — 'a blue dot in the red sea of Tennessee' — [Renkl] writes perceptively of the region where she was born and raised (in Alabama), educated (in South Carolina), and settled... Renkl vividly evokes the lush natural beauty of the rivers, old-growth forests, 'red-dirt pineywoods,' marshes, and coastal plains that she deeply loves... A wide-ranging look at the realities of the South." Kirkus Reviews

“Like nothing else in the newspaper, [Renkl’s columns] burst with awareness of the things of nature, awareness that our lives are led in that midst, permeated with and part of the natural world. All is written with an open, joyful, yet steady voice of wonder.” Philadelphia Inquirer

“In 1956, author E.B. White suggested that newspapers cover nature as eagerly as commerce, having columns devoted not only to the flow of business but also the arrival of birds. Renkl... seems like a belated answer to White... [crafting] graceful sentences that White would surely have enjoyed. A collection of her Times columns would be a welcome thing.” Wall Street Journal

Watch the Powell’s virtual event with Margaret Renkl and Mary Laura Philpott!

Margaret Renkl is the author of Graceland, At Last and Late Migrations, which was a Read with Jenna/TODAY Show book club selection. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. Her work has also appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Proximity, and River Teeth, among others. She was the founding editor of Chapter 16, the daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina. She lives in Nashville.