Longleaf Pine Forests

The longleaf pine forests are one of the stars of this book. They originally spanned from Virginia south to Florida and west to Mississippi. They have been so depleted and overused that they now exist only in Southern Georgia and Northern Florida.

Baxley, Georgia

Janisse Ray was born in a rural area on the outskirts of Baxley, Georgia, a small town in Appling County. The town had a population of some 3,500.

Southern Georgia

The rural part of Southern Georgia that Janisse Ray grew up in was populated with mainly poor, white people. Images of that region included bent-over cotton field workers, whites only signs, children with no shoes and tar-paper shanties.

Crackers

The Celtic, Scottish and Irish immigrant farmers that moved into the south in the 1800s were referred to as Crackers which at the time meant braggarts or liars. The term eventually became synonymous...