Welcome
Southverve is a summer journey blog. Here, Baptist churches and strip clubs can be found side by side just off exits and on billboards along southern roadways, welcoming tourists on their way to Florida. It’s about how to boil young peanuts in August and cool them down in brown salted water, about swamp pines that survive lightning strikes and long-leaf pines that are native, field hands and roofers.
Southverve is about red clay and water rights. It’s about state capitals: the old south and the new and the monuments that embody both. It’s about segregated high school proms and the battles to desegregate them. It’s about diamondbacks stretched out on cool sand, and grandparents and parents whispering their death-stories about cousins who didn’t make it. It’s about towns thriving and towns gone in the heat, always the summer heat. This is where I come from, my geography, where I’m returning.
My name is James Braziel. I’m the author of two novels – Snakeskin Road and Birmingham, 35 Miles – and a chapbook of poems – Weathervane. With the release of Snakeskin Road this August 2009, I’ll be traveling the Southeast giving readings and writing here about the journey. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio now, and from the overlooks I can see barges cutting down the Ohio River, and beyond the river, Kentucky. Soon I’ll be crossing the bridge over. This is an invitation for you to follow.