The soaring white columns, the manacles, the dingy apartment buildings at the Forks of the Road, the tendrils of Spanish moss hanging from the gnarled old trees, the humid fragrant air itself: everything seemed charged with the lingering presence of slavery, in a way that I'd never experienced anywhere else.
-- Richard Grant (chapter 1)

Importance: Grant reacts strongly to visiting the Forks of the Road, once a slave market that thousands of souls passed through. Grant feels the weight of those who were enslaved.

We're house crazy. We adore old homes, antiques, throwing parties, making it fabulous. Gay men love it here. Natchez is very liberal and tolerant in some ways, and very conservative and racist in other ways, although I will say that our racists generally aren't hateful or mean.
-- Regina Charboneau (chapter 1)

Importance: This sentence helps to explain the paradox of Natchez. This town elects a gay African American in a landslide, but many of its prominent...