Salvation South

Chapter 1, excerpted from “This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew”

Daniel Wallace is one of the South’s greatest writers, and to dive into his most recent volume is to reckon with how hard it is to make peace with yourself and with others.

The Smithsonian’s “Biography of a Phantom” answers countless questions — and raises countless more — about Robert Johnson, the Mississippi bluesman who legendarily sold his soul to the devil.

Sometimes, you get a treat from the universe just exactly when you need one. And sometimes, if your stars align, it comes glazed with sugar.

He was singing a song lamenting the murder of George Floyd when a woman who had stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, said she didn’t agree. Not at all.

We welcome the renowned music writer Don McLeese to Salvation South with a story about the biggest legend in the history of Southern music.

O.N. Pruitt was the “picture man” where journalist Berkley Hudson grew up. Pruitt’s photographs helped Hudson understand the state he ran away from — and the state that drew him back.

She keeps the murex shell she found on the beach 63 years ago after Hurricane Donna ravaged her island home, and at her house, hurricane season never ends.

Growing up Black in a small Georgia town was hard enough. But Miriam Delaney Heard also had to break the chains of the religion she was raised in. Her salvation came from writing her own story.

Jim Crow dumped its worst on Lonnie Holley. But his globally recognized music and art prove how beautifully he survived the belly of that beast. Just don’t call him an “outsider.”

Sometimes, we need a talisman to remind us of the difference between who we used to be and who we are now. In Rachel Martin’s house, it’s a log. A very particular log.

Imagine you plopped a crazy 1950s New York School poet down into a 21st century Saturday night in Durham. It’d be dirty, you know, in that good way.