Gail Roughton

I've heard it said, you should write what you know. I've also heard it said that's a really bad idea. Because even if a qualified doctor knows his (or her) streptococcus from her (or his) coccyx - books aren't about bugs. Or bones. They're about people - and life. So people writing about what they know can get hung up on what they know - and maybe miss writing a book.
That isn't Gail Roughton. I'd say Miss Gail, because this is the South. But there's rocks round here called me granfer when they was mountains. So I won't :-).
I've never been to Georgia. It would be easy, and maybe trite, to say Gail Roughton took me there. She didn't. Because while I was reading it (and I read it in a single sitting, into the early hours, because I didn't want to stop), it was like I'd always been there. In Kincaid County, where everybody knows everybody - and nobody knows anybody. Because there's more secrets buried behind smiles and old newspaper clippings than any county churchyard could hide.
Gail Roughton clearly knows her succotash from her sour mash, and her y'alls from her yes ma'ams, but she doesn't hit you oever the head with them. You just soak them up in passing,, like the sweet smell of gardenias on a summer night. Because this is the South, but Down Home isn't about the South. Or not just about the South. It's about a man dead more years than he was alive, and why he's coming home. It's about those long buried secrets, and those deeper hidden in plain sight. And maybe it's about none of that at all. Maybe it's about why even when you're dead, you can never leave. Not in Kincaid County.
Did I like 'Down home'? Yes, I did. It's not the type of thing I generally read, but I did like it. A lot. Were there things I didn't like? Yes, there were. But not because they were badly written. They weren't. I didn't like them because they rang old bells of my own. Because we all grew up in Kincaid, whatever the place we grew up in was called. And we know it's still there - and one day, we'll have to go back. Back Down Home.… (más)