{"title":"Willie Morris Books In Memoir And Biography","description":"\u003cp\u003eDive into the poignant world of Willie Morris, where personal stories intertwine with the tapestry of Southern history. Experience heartfelt memoirs and biographies that capture a bygone era with warmth and insight.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"last-resort-book-norma-watkins-9781604739770","title":"The Last Resort","description":"Raised under the racial segregation that kept her family's southern country hotel afloat, Norma Watkins grows up listening at doors, trying to penetrate the secrets and silences of the black help and of her parents' marriage. Groomed to be an ornament to white patriarchy, she sees herself failing at the ideal of becoming a southern lady.The Last Resort, her compelling memoir, begins in childhood at Allison's Wells, a popular Mississippi spa for proper white people, run by her aunt. Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise. Yet young Norma wonders at a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal while forbidding their sitting with whites to eat.Once integration is court-mandated, her beloved father becomes a stalwart captain in defense of Jim Crow as a counselor to fiery, segregationist Governor Ross Barnett. His daughter flounders, looking for escape. A fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change, daily made manifest by the men in her home. A sexually bleak marriage only emphasizes a growing emotional emptiness. When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind? 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Drawing on excerpts from numerous letters and material from interviews with family members and friends, Larry Brown: A Writer's Life is the first biography of a landmark southern writer.Jean W. Cash explores the cultural milieu of Oxford, Mississippi, and the writers who influenced Brown, including William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Harry Crews, and Cormac McCarthy. She covers Brown's history in Mississippi, the troubled family in which he grew up, and his boyhood in Tula and Yocona, Mississippi, and in Memphis, Tennessee. She relates stories from Brown's time in the Marines, his early married life-which included sixteen years as an Oxford fireman-and what he called his \"\"apprenticeship\"\" period, the eight years during which he was teaching himself to write publishable fiction.The book examines Brown's years as a writer: the stories and novels he wrote, his struggles to acclimate himself to the fame his writing brought him, and his many trips outside Yocona, where he spent the last thirty years of his life. The book concludes with a discussion of his posthumous fame, including the publication of A Miracle of Catfish, the novel he had nearly completed just before his death. 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Struggling to learn the English language and American customs, Samuel begins to lose faith in his abilities, suffers depression, and is haunted by both recurring nightmares of his violent past and survivor's guilt. Coming to Colorado charts the path of Samuel's eventual triumph. In 1960, his proud mother saw pinned on his shoulders the gold bars of a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force. 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Thomason not only shares Brooks's powerful story but reveals, through excerpts from journal entries, letters, and interviews, the intimate musings that connect Brooks's faith in God to her profound compassion for others. 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Charlie Spillers dealt with a remarkable variety of career criminals, including heroin traffickers, safecrackers, burglars, auto thieves, and members of Mafia and Mexican drug smuggling operations. In this riveting tale, the author recounts fascinating experiences and the creative methods he used to succeed and survive in a difficult and sometimes extremely dangerous underworld life.  As a young officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department, ex-Marine Charlie Spillers first went undercover to infiltrate criminal groups to gather intelligence. Working alone and often unarmed, he constantly attempted to walk the thin line between triumph and disaster. When on the hunt, his closest associates were safecrackers, prostitutes, and burglars. His abilities propelled him into years of undercover work inside drug trafficking rings. But the longer he worked, the greater the risks. His final and perhaps most significant action in Baton Rouge was leading a battle against corruption in the police department itself.  After Baton Rouge, he joined the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and for the next five years continued working undercover, from the Gulf Coast to Memphis; and from New Orleans to Houston, Texas. He capped off a unique career by becoming a federal prosecutor and the justice attaché for Iraq. In this book, he shares his most intriguing exploits and exciting undercover stings, putting readers in the middle of the action.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50111781011729,"sku":"CIN1496818539G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51030180462865,"sku":"NIN9781496818539","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52133323899153,"sku":"NLS9781496818539","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496818539.jpg?v=1763480867"},{"product_id":"death-in-the-delta-book-molly-walling-9781617036095","title":"Death in the Delta","description":"Growing up, Molly Walling could not fathom the source of the dark and intense discomfort in her family home. Then in 2006 she discovered her father's complicity in the murder of two black men on December 12, 1946, in Anguilla, deep in the Mississippi Delta. Death in the Delta tells the story of one woman's search for the truth behind a closely held, sixty-year old family secret. Though the author's mother and father decided that they would protect their three children from that past, its effect was profound. When the story of a fatal shoot-out surfaced, apprehension turned into a devouring need to know.  Each of Walling's trips from North Carolina to the Delta brought unsettling and unexpected clues. After a hearing before an all-white grand jury, her father's case was not prosecuted. Indeed, it appeared as if the incident never occurred, and he resumed his life as a small-town newspaper editor. Yet family members of one of the victims tell her their stories. A ninety-three-year-old black historian and witness gives context and advice. A county attorney suggests her family's history of commingling with black women was at the heart of the deadly confrontation. Firsthand the author recognizes how privilege, entitlement, and racial bias in a wealthy, landed southern family resulted in a deadly abuse of power followed by a stifling, decades-long cover up.   Death in the Delta is a deeply personal account of a quest to confront a terrible legacy. Against the advice and warnings of family, Walling exposes her father's guilty agency in the deaths of Simon Toombs and David Jones. She also exposes his gift as a writer and creative thinker. The author, grappling with wrenching issues of family and honor, was long conflicted about making this story public. 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After being encouraged by a Publisher to write books for and about African American children, Walter went on to become a pioneer of African American children's literature. Most notably, she wrote Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World, which bent preconceptions with tales of black cowboys and men doing \"women’s work.\" She was also a contributing book reviewer to the Los Angeles Times. In Something Inside So Strong: Life in Pursuit of Choice, Courage, and Change, Walter recollects major touchstones in her life. The autobiography, divided into three parts, \"Choice,\" \"Courage,\" and \"Change,\" covers Walter’s life beginning with her childhood in the 1920s and moving to the present day.    In \"Choice,\" Walter describes growing up in a deeply segregated Louisiana and includes memories of school, rural home life, World War II, and participating in neighborhood activities like hog killing and church revivals. \"Courage\" documents her adjustment to living away from family, her experiences teaching in Los Angeles and her extensive work with her husband for the Los Angeles chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. The final section, \"Change,\" shows how Walter’s writing and activism merged, detailing her work as an education consultant and as an advocate for nonviolent resistance to racism. It also reveals how her world travels expanded her personal inquiry into Christianity and African spirituality. 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After fierce argument and much door slamming, Betty could not defy her father. But she had to show him she was her own person. Her nation was at war - so Betty joined the Marines.  After the war, Betty married Bill Pearson and became mistress of Rainbow Plantation in the Delta. In 1955, she attended the Emmett Till trial (accompanied by her close friend and budding civil rights activist Florence Mars) and was shocked by the virulent degree of racism she witnessed there. Seeing her world in a new way, she became a courageous and dedicated supporter of the civil rights movement. Her activities severely fractured her close relationship with her parents. 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Many remember Poe as a difficult, self-pitying, troubled drunkard often incapable of caring for himself.  Poe reclaims the Baltimore and Virginia writer's reputation and power, retracing Poe's life and career. Biographer and critic James M. Hutchisson captures the boisterous worlds of literary New York and Philadelphia in the 1800s to understand why Poe wrote the way he did and why his achievement was so important to American literature. The biography presents a critical overview of Poe's major works and his main themes, techniques, and imaginative preoccupations.  This portrait of the writer emphasizes Poe's southern identity; his existence as a workaday journalist in the burgeoning magazine era; his authority as a literary critic and cultural arbiter; his courtly demeanor and sense of social propriety; his advocacy of women writers; his adaptation of art forms as diverse as the so-called \"\"gutter press\"\" and the haunting rhythms of African American spirituals; his borrowing of imagery from such popular social movements as temperance and freemasonry; and his far-reaching, posthumous influence.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50311134019857,"sku":"CIN1578067219G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51322620215569,"sku":"CIN1578067219A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1578067219.jpg?v=1750719042"},{"product_id":"my-triumph-over-prejudice-book-martha-wyatt-rossignol-9781496806031","title":"My Triumph Over Prejudice","description":"My Triumph over Prejudice is the autobiography of a black girl growing up in Mississippi during the civil rights era. Born in 1949, Martha Wyatt-Rossignol came of age during some of the most crucial and dangerous years of the civil rights movement. She examines those years and what happened when the movement upended her small town of Fayette. She describes the conditions under which blacks lived during segregation and how those oppressive rules changed, despite massive resistance from whites.  Wyatt-Rossignol faced racial hatred when she was chosen for an early school desegregation program. Her failed marriage to an African American led to her dating and later wedding a white man, a civil rights worker from the North, to whom she is still married. That union sparked disapproval from both the white and black communities, revealing entrenched complexities of race and racism in her hometown.  Her story also follows the politics of that volatile era in a local context. Black politicians, helped by national civil rights figures, assumed more power and began improving life for all races in this rural area. Then came a betrayal felt by many blacks as these key figures overreached their authority and started pursuing their own selfish agendas. An intimate, revealing portrait of Charles Evers, the first black mayor of Fayette and brother of Medgar Evers, is included in this section. The memoir goes on to portray how the author learned to hate whites as a result of her experiences and how she later overcame that animosity. 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In many ways, Winter's story over nine decades is also the story of the evolution of Mississippi in the second half of the twentieth century.  Winter has remained active in public life since retiring from politics following an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign against Thad Cochran in 1984. During the last twenty-five years, Winter has worked with a variety of organizations to champion issues that have always been central to his vision of how to advance the interests of his native state and the South as a whole. Improving the economy, upgrading the educational system, and facilitating racial reconciliation are goals he has pursued with passion. The first biography of this pivotal figure, William F. 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About the memoir, author and editor Michael Griffith writes, \"\"This might be a controversial book, in the best way--controversial because it speaks to real and intractable problems and speaks to them with rare bluntness.\"\"The narrative of Parrish's descent into fear and irrational behavior begins with bigotry and apocalyptic thinking in his Southern Baptist church. Living a life upon this volatile foundation of prejudice and apprehension, Parrish feels destabilized by his brother going to Vietnam, his own puberty and restlessness, serious family illness, and economic uncertainty. Then a near-fatal street fight and subsequent stalking by an older sociopath fracture what security is left, leaving him terrified and seemingly helpless.  Parrish comes to believe that he can only be safe by allying himself with brute force. This brute influence is a vicious, charismatic racist. Under this bigot's terrible sway Parrish, turns to violence in the street and at school. He is even conflicted about whether he will help commit murder in order to avenge a friend. At seventeen he must reckon with all of this as his parents and neighbors grow increasingly afraid that they are \"\"losing\"\" their neighborhood to African Americans. Fear and What Follows is an unparalleled story of the complex roots of southern, urban, working-class racism and white flight, as well as a story of family, love, and the possibility of redemption.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50385943429393,"sku":"CIN1617038660G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51696529834257,"sku":"CIN1617038660VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1617038660.jpg?v=1763484204"},{"product_id":"nominee-book-leslie-h-southwick-9781617039126","title":"The Nominee","description":"President George W. 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Then in late October, by a two-vote margin, he received the votes needed to end a filibuster. Confirmation followed.  Southwick recounts the four years he spent at the Department of Justice, the twelve years on a state court, and his military service in Iraq while deployed with a Mississippi National Guard Brigade. During the nomination inferno Southwick maintained a diary of the many events, the conversations and emails, the joys and despairs, and quite often, the prayers and sense of peace his faith gave him--his memoir bears significant spiritual content. Throughout the struggle, Southwick learned that perspective and growth are important to all of us when making decisions, and he grew to accept his critics, regardless of outcome. 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The Klansman, the soldier of fortune, the wild-eyed prisoner transforms into a renowned leader of the Mississippi Gulf Coast cleanup effort in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In his too-crazy-not-to-be-true memoir, Malvaney chronicles what easily should be several lifetimes of adventure--and misadventure. Growing up in a close-knit family in Jackson, Mississippi, the young Malvaney preferred woods and swamps to the drudgery of high school. He dropped out, enlisted in the Navy, and shortly afterwards joined the Ku Klux Klan. While onboard, he organized a branch of the Klan, corrupting and endangering his crewmen. After his discharge, he answered a mercenary call to take part in an invasion of Dominica, a Caribbean fiasco known as the \"\"Bayou of Pigs.\"\" That madness landed him in a federal penitentiary. And there, somehow, he vowed to turn his life around. Cups Up, a title drawn from the wake-up call shouted at prisoners, is a story of perseverance, cleansing, and redemption. It chronicles the roller coaster life of a high school dropout, ex-Klansman, ex-mercenary, ex-felon, and ex-con, who went on to become a college graduate, a hardnosed environmental regulator, and a widely respected top executive in a company with more than a thousand employees.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50386784485649,"sku":"CIN149681679XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/149681679X.jpg?v=1750828253"},{"product_id":"flights-from-fassberg-book-wolfgang-w-e-samuel-9781496833648","title":"Flights from Fassberg","description":"Wolfgang W. E. 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She co-starred in Birth of the Blues opposite Bing Crosby and Mary Martin. She sang at Harlem's Apollo Theater and in the Hollywood Bowl. Her remarkable soprano voice was known to millions over the radio. She was personally chosen by George Gershwin to create one of the leading roles in his masterpiece, that of Serena in the original production of Porgy and Bess. Her signature song was the vocally demanding \"\"My Man's Gone Now.\"\" From obscurity she had risen to great heights. Ruby Pearl Elzy (1908-1943) was born in abject poverty in Pontotoc, Mississippi. Her father abandoned the family when she was five, leaving her mother, a strong, devout woman, to raise four small children. Ruby first sang publicly at the age of four and even in childhood dreamed of a career on the stage. Good fortune struck when a visiting professor, overwhelmed upon hearing her beautiful voice at Rust College in Mississippi, arranged for her to study music at Ohio State University. Later, on a Rosenwald Fellowship, she enrolled at the Juilliard School in New York City. After more than 800 performances in Porgy and Bess, she set her sights on a huge goal, to sing in grand opera. She was at the peak of her form. While she was preparing for her debut in the title role of Verdi's Aida, tragedy struck.  During her brief career, Ruby Elzy was in the top tier of American sopranos and a precursor who paved a way for Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, and other black divas of the operatic stage. 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David L. Jordan: From the Mississippi Cotton Fields to the State Senate is the memoir of black Mississippi state senator and city councilman Jordan. His life in twentieth-century Mississippi spanned some of the most difficult times for black Mississippians as they coped with the effects of crippling economic circumstances caused by tenant farming and second-class citizenship enforced through the most violent and repressive means. Jordan shares his experiences from early childhood growing up in Leflore County, the heart of the Mississippi Delta, through his life and work in government. He rose from humble beginnings to become professional educator and eventually one of the Deep South's most recognizable social and political activists. In this revealing autobiography, Jordan describes his witness to the often brutal and humiliating mistreatment of blacks by white racists. He is one of the few persons still alive who attended the sensational trial of the two white men accused of the horrific lynching of Emmett Till in 1955. Jordan recounts the atmosphere and drama surrounding the case with telling effects, shining light on this brand of Mississippi injustice that will help readers understand why many people consider the case the real genesis of the modern civil rights movement. Though change was often slow and grudging, Jordan's Mississippi has evolved and continues to overcome. Indeed, Jordan's story is notably a revelation of his role as a catalyst in shaping many of the gains blacks have achieved in Mississippi in the past fifty years. 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Based on Butler's own personal papers, including hundreds of letters, and dozens of interviews, Political Animal paints an intimate portrait of a legendary figure in gay politics and the times in which he lived.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50414450999569,"sku":"CIN1496841298VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51331200844049,"sku":"CIN1496841298G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52530672533777,"sku":"NLS9781496841292","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496841298.jpg?v=1763481087"},{"product_id":"steps-we-take-book-ellen-ann-fentress-9781496847751","title":"The Steps We Take","description":"Ellen Ann Fentress is a veteran writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic. 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Eventually, along with claiming a personal second act at midlife, she realized the most urgent community work she could do was to spur truth-telling about the history she knew well and participated in. She was one of the nearly one million students in the South enrolled in all-white \"segregation academies,\" a sweeping movement away from public education that continues to warp the Deep South today. To document and engage with this history, she founded the Admissions Project: Racism and the Possible in Southern Schools, which has been featured in the Washington Post, Slate, Forbes and other publications.   The Steps We Take tells how one woman reckons with both a region’s history and her own past. Through a lens ranging from intimate to the widely human, through moments painful and darkly comic, Fentress casts a penetrating light on what it means to be a white southern woman today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50417642602769,"sku":"CIN149684775XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51030435463441,"sku":"NIN9781496847751","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52106543497489,"sku":"CIN149684775XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52674339537169,"sku":"NLS9781496847751","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/149684775X.jpg?v=1761391252"},{"product_id":"becoming-ezra-jack-keats-book-virginia-mcgee-butler-9781496844743","title":"Becoming Ezra Jack Keats","description":"Becoming Ezra Jack Keats offers the first complete biography of acclaimed children’s author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (1916–1983) intended for adult readers. 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Instead, as shown in Becoming Ezra Jack Keats, he is now regarded as one of the most influential figures in children’s literature, having published twenty-two books translated into sixteen languages, all featuring the diversity he saw in the children outside the window of his Brooklyn studio.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50492843491601,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50492845687057,"sku":"CIN1496844742VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53121810891025,"sku":"CIN1496844742G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496844742.jpg?v=1751116972"},{"product_id":"to-dance-to-live-book-carolyn-j-brown-9781496845306","title":"To Dance, to Live","description":"Thalia Mara’s story spans the history of dance in the twentieth century and the rise of the arts in her adopted city of Jackson, Mississippi. As an adolescent Mara (1911–2003) studied with renowned Russian teacher Adolph Bolm, who recommended she go at age sixteen to Paris for further study. During a tour in Europe and South America, she met her partner in dance and life, Arthur Mahoney, and they dazzled the world with their breathtaking performances during the 1930s and '40s. The two were named codirectors of Jacob’s Pillow in 1947, gracing the cover of Life magazine that year. Later they started two schools of dance in New York City, but despite much success, they closed due to lack of funding. That misfortune, however, was Jackson’s boon as it led Mara to the second phase of her career: reviving the Jackson Ballet Company and bringing the USA International Ballet Competition (IBC) to the state.  Thalia Mara was recognized at the end of her life not only for the USA IBC’s decision to locate in Jackson, but also for her efforts as a patron of the arts. Her extraordinary fundraising and planning attracted international performers to the city in the 1980s and '90s. To Dance, to Live: A Biography of Thalia Mara gives the first full account of a life devoted to the arts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50630835994897,"sku":"NGR9781496845306","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496845307.jpg?v=1763479495"},{"product_id":"with-hawks-and-angels-book-joel-lafayette-fletcher-iii-9781496844699","title":"With Hawks and Angels","description":"With Hawks and Angels: Episodes from a Southern Life chronicles the fortunate life of a man born in the Cajun country of Louisiana and his interaction with the three distinct parts of his home state: the swampy, laissez-faire South where he was born, the red clay hills and piney woods of northern Louisiana where his relatives lived, and exotic New Orleans, where he was educated.   Author Joel Lafayette Fletcher III examines his childhood on the campus of what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where his father, Joel Lafayette Fletcher Jr., was president for twenty-five years, to his time as a student at Tulane. The book follows Fletcher through his service as a naval officer—when he began to admit to himself, accept, and explore who he really was—to his life in Europe and, eventually, Virginia where he now resides. With Hawks and Angels intimately explores the life of a young man growing up in the racially segregated Deep South while coming to terms with being gay at a time when being out was not socially acceptable.   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