The South has a history of injustices. I know them well. I was born and reared in lower Alabama. Our history is tainted with ugliness. But there’s an old saying that “nothing has ever been sliced so thin that it doesn’t have two sides.” I come from a long line of good, Christian church goers—and also from a line of backwoodsy, redneck moonshiners. The haves. And the have-nots. My two grandmothers had very different views of life during the Depression years. Both have shaped my life, and the seeds passed down have helped shape my novels. My mother was a city girl who in 1935 fell in love with the son of a tenant farmer—a man who retold the same stories countless times and yet I never tired of hearing them. The seeds fell on fertile soil. They’ve taken root and I’m now seeing them spring forth in the lives of my characters. I hope you enjoy these Southern Secrets.