Country Life

Mildew on the Magnolias

I AM shuffling books in my bookstore when a customer comes up to me. Peering over her mask, she says: ‘I guess you haven’t been back home during all this. Do you get homesick?’

It’s a friendly question that deserves a friendly answer. I’ve learned that most folks don’t expect a diatribe about the state that believes Donald Trump won the last election. They don’t want to hear the heartbreaking news that Mississippi is the first state to reach the morbid milestone of losing one in every 300 residents to coronavirus and that, if Mississippi were a country, it would have the second-highest per capita

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