"In this book the author recounts the story of the Faulkners of Mississippi, whose legacy includes pioneers, noble and ignoble war veterans, three never convicted murderers, the builder of the first railroad in north Mississippi, the founding president of a bank, an FBI agent, four pilots (all brothers), and a Nobel prize winner arguably the most important American novelist of the twentieth century. She also reveals wonderfully entertaining and intimate...

"How do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, one of America's most preeminent literary critics. Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world. Born in 1897 in Mississippi,...