Photo Courtesy of Betsy Airs Edgerton

 

Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It

“Tom Poland brings the fading and forgotten rural South back to life with a deeply felt reverence for the power of story to preserve our shared past. In these pages, we ride shotgun with Tom past covered bridges, tenant homes, country stores, and sweetgrass basket stands into a South that—like the Goat Man—we may never see again.”—Pat Conroy

“For those who love tidbits about the olden days in the Deep South, Poland’s slow-moving prose will rekindle fond memories, and readers looking for a taste of what the South once was before industrialization and commercialization moved into the region will find pleasing moments to ponder.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Come take a seat next to Tom Poland as he travels the back roads of memory and the less beaten paths of Georgia and South Carolina. His narratives of country stores, dirt roads, burned down family places, barbeque stands and sweet grass baskets ring with a Southern accent and a knowledgeable familiarity with the wild places and country people he has written about for years. Poland’s Geogialina is sure to bestir your own recollections.”—Ben McC. Moïse, author of Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden: A Memoir, and editor of A Southern Sportsman: The Hunting Memoirs of Henry Edwards Davis

“Tom Poland is a chronicler of southern culture—not the kind of dry intellectual history that academics write for each other, but beautifully crafted stories that capture the texture of daily life when the South was the last redoubt of regional culture. Fortunately for us, his memory is true.”—Dennis McCarthy, retired publications editor for the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee
“Tom Poland’s ‘beautiful burden’ has been to preserve the battery-free world in which he grew up. Boil some peanuts, pour some bourbon, and prepare for a salty, sweet sojourn into the rural South. Georgialina is real—authentic, eccentric, and now blessedly captured like fireflies flickering before summer’s end.”—Aïda Rogers, editor of State of the Heart: Southern Writers on the Places They Love