Last Time Down Blackwater

Flora-Bama is much more than a famed, mullet-tossing honky-tonk at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. It is a region. A region that straddles the state lines, beyond the gleaming white sands of Destin, Florida, to Orange Beach on the 'Bama side. But it also stretches north, north to a land where pickup trucks fly down dusty, pine-shadowed back roads, the smell of fried chicken floats from cafes, and the humidity sticks to you like a hangover. It's a place where people still hold the door and ask how your mama's doing.

In other words, it's Southern. Replete with log trucks and paper mills, slow crawling muddy rivers and clear, sand-bottom creeks, two-lane black tops and farm land, as well as little towns whose main streets long ago lost the battle with Walmart.

These stories are about the people who live here. The haves and the have-nots, like anywhere else. Some live respectable, financially comfortable lives, going to work at a courthouse or a hospital or a quiet, freshly painted office someplace, or maybe they simply stay home and tend their azalea framed house on a tidy street. Even so, they have their crosses to bear.

Others live from paycheck to paycheck and know what it's like to put three dollars' worth of gas in their car and try to hang on until Friday. People whose lives are no walk on the beach. They work at laundromats and nursing homes, drive trucks or break eggs over a griddle at the Waffle House. They often live in not-so-nice houses and trailers or maybe even nursing homes. They smile when they take your order at the diner while their lives are crumbling around them. They cry themselves to sleep, wondering how they'll pay the rent or buy their children's school supplies, ashamed of not doing better. They admire the beauty of roses but can't face the raw ugliness of their own addiction.

In this collection, the author unflinchingly lays bare their struggles, as well as their determination not to buckle under the weight of grief, heart-wringing despair, poverty, or downright cruelty. These stories are unfiltered, drenched in sweat, sweet tea and bad decisions, as unpretentious as cast iron, yet laced with tenderness, humor, and grace. They slice to the bone but they also catch at your heartstrings. The characters stay with you, alive beyond the stories. Impossible to forget.

So jump in an old pickup and take a ride through the Flora-Bama that lies beyond bright lights and bikinis, beach hotels and bands blaring "Sweet Home Alabama". Prop your feet on the dashboard and roll the windows down. The ride may get rough and rugged at times, but it will never be anything but honest.

So jump in a pickup and take a ride through Flora-Bama. It won't always be a smooth one, but it will always be honest.