Excerpt

From Chapter 1:

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone?

—DIXIE CHICKS

I'll have you know that I don't usually drink in semiprofessional situations. But seeing as this pig pickin' is being held in my honor, and a handsome man in a seersucker suit is eyeing me intently as he pours me a tasty mint julep from an icy pitcher, I've decided to leave my newspaper ethics at home.

I notice how pleasing his muscles look in his suit. And I'm sure he notices how stunning I look in my buttercup brown cowboy boots and my powder pink hat—the size of a Frisbee—which hangs over my head in a slightly funky, slightly elegant way.

I'm feeling rather relaxed as I gaze up from my cushioned lawn chair at this giant Italianate mansion in front of me. Green sheets of Japanese kudzu are dripping down the walls by the columned front steps, and two hundred purple rhododendrons line the brick walkway.

I'm nibbling delicately on a heaping plate of food: crackling, crisp pieces of pig, baked beans dripping with molasses, and pieces of fried okra that are soft in the middle and crunchy on the outside.

Meanwhile, all around me on the lawn, violas and snapdragons reach up out of the earth, and the fragrance of the hickory wood coals from the pig pit mixes with the minty smell of late afternoon. The scents wrap around me like a summer shawl, and a few feet away from me my new editor is telling everyone I'm the most exciting thing that has arrived in North Carolina since General