The Delta in the Rearview Mirror

The Delta in the Rearview Mirror PDF Author: Di Rushing
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781496849298
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A firsthand account of the splendid rise and frightening fall of Mississippi's first winery

The Delta in the Rearview Mirror

The Delta in the Rearview Mirror PDF Author: Di Rushing
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496849302
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
After graduating from Mississippi State University in 1976, Di Rushing and her husband, Sam, found themselves back on their family farm near Merigold, Mississippi, with 350 acres and no real clue what to do. The couple decided to open the first winery in Mississippi, and with it, a successful business was born. Six years later, a small restaurant joined the Delta winery. Both businesses were thriving by 1990, with eight national award-winning wines, a beautiful vineyard, and a successful restaurant. But in March of 1990, a series of unforeseen events rocked the operation. After the Rushings discovered one of the tour guides, Ray Russell, selling drugs in the winery parking lot, they fired him. He responded with a terrorizing vengeance that persisted over the next nine months. In the early morning hours, the former guide broke into the winery, crept into the wine cellar, and released the entire inventory—nearly a quarter of a million dollars’ worth—down the drain. Fortunately, his incompetence thwarted his most destructive intention to blow up the restaurant. In his rampage, he broke all the windows, which allowed the gas from the kitchen oven to escape, sparing the premises. Though the Rushings rebuilt with the help of their community, Russell continued to stalk and threaten the young family. As his menacing behavior continued to escalate, the Rushings closed their business of fourteen years and moved to Ouray, Colorado, where they began rebuilding their lives. Culminating in the sudden, violent murders of Russell, his wife, and his father twenty-five years later, this book tells a story of both shock and resilience, charting Mississippi history in the process. Intertwined with the true crime narrative, The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery details author Di Rushing’s life in and out of Mississippi, including growing up in 1960s Greenville, attending university, traveling overseas, and the relationships she cultivated along the way.

The Speckled Beauty

The Speckled Beauty PDF Author: Rick Bragg
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593081412
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog. Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg's inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.

Deer Creek Drive

Deer Creek Drive PDF Author: Beverly Lowry
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1984898361
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The stunning true story of a murder that rocked the Mississippi Delta and forever shaped one author’s life and perception of home. “Mix together a bloody murder in a privileged white family, a false accusation against a Black man, a suspicious town, a sensational trial with colorful lawyers, and a punishment that didn’t fit the crime, and you have the best of southern gothic fiction. But the very best part is that the story is true.” —John Grisham In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home: stabbed at least 150 times and left facedown in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered. When Dickins herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted, signed, and circulated, and after only six years, the governor of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickins an indefinite suspension of her sentence and she was set free. In Deer Creek Drive, Beverly Lowry—who was ten at the time of the murder and lived mere miles from the Thompsons’ home—tells a story of white privilege that still has ramifications today, and reflects on the brutal crime, its aftermath, and the ways it clarified her own upbringing in Mississippi.

Dispatches from Pluto

Dispatches from Pluto PDF Author: Richard Grant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476709645
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
New Yorkers Grant and his girlfriend Mariah decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. This is their journey of discovery to a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters, capture the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, and delve deeply into the Delta's lingering racial tensions. As the nomadic Grant learns to settle down, he falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home.

Olympus, Texas

Olympus, Texas PDF Author: Stacey Swann
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1984897403
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A bighearted novel with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology. For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe: "The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut" (Oprah Daily). The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down. An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point, don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?

The Life of Dick Haymes

The Life of Dick Haymes PDF Author: Ruth Prigozy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781496828170
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
A biography of the superstar crooner, his rise, fall, and struggle for a second act

Master of the Delta

Master of the Delta PDF Author: Thomas H. Cook
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0156033208
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Jack Branch, the last son of an aristocratic Old South family, has returned to his hometown, taking on the job of teacher at the local high school. When he sets his students a paper entitled 'The Most Evil Person', he expects essays on historical tyrants and literary villains. He doesn't expect Eddie Miller's choice - his own father. Throughout his life, Eddie has been known as 'The Coed Killer's Son', because when Eddie was eight years old, his father killed a local college student, dismembered her body, and buried the pieces in a local forest. Eddie's investigation of his own father's dark secrets steadily widens until, ultimately, it encompasses the whole town.

Making a Gangsta

Making a Gangsta PDF Author: Larry Johnson
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1662416237
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Slow L was marked by death at a young age when his stepfather is murdered and mother shot down in front of him. Eight years passed and still trying to outdistance this tragedy but haunted by it every step of the way. Lack of trust made him jump off the porch a little sooner than most kids. Once he learned the Milwaukee streets had real people that acted in the form of animals and orangutans among the living, he knew then he needed to adapt to the Mil-jungle, or get peeled, or eaten alive. Nobody was to be trusted—not a priest, not the police, not his childhood friends, or closest relatives. They made him a gangsta with no explanation as to why.

New Orleans Con Sabor Latino

New Orleans Con Sabor Latino PDF Author: Zella Palmer Cuadra
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617038954
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
New Orleans con Sabor Latino is a documentary cookbook that draws on the rich Latino culture and history of New Orleans by focusing on thirteen New Orleanian Latinos from diverse backgrounds. Their stories are compelling and reveal what for too long has been overlooked. The book celebrates the influence of Latino cuisine on the food culture of New Orleans from the eighteenth century to the influx of Latino migration post-Katrina and up to today. From farmers' markets, finedining restaurants, street cart vendors, and home cooks, there isn't a part of the food industry that has been left untouched by this fusion of cultures. Zella Palmer Cuadra visited and interviewed each creator. Each dish is placed in historical context and is presented in full-color images, along with photographs of the cooks. Latino culture has left an indelible mark on classic New Orleans cuisine and its history, and now this contribution is celebrated and recognized in this beautifully illustrated volume. The cookbook includes a lagniappe (something extra) section of New Orleans recipes from a Latin perspective. Such creations as seafood paella with shrimp boudin, Puerto Rican po'boy (jibarito) with grillades, and Cuban chicken soup bring to life this delicious mix of traditional recipes and new flavors.