"Not long ago, on a whim, I traced my heritage online and saw that my grandfather, whom I’d never met and who’d died at forty-nine, was born in Wadley, Georgia. In fact, there is a whole passel—now that I realize I am super-Southern, I feel like using words like “passel”—of my people from tiny little Wadley. My great-grandfather before him was born there as well, and then—get this—in 1881 he studied for a time in Atlanta and lived on West Peachtree Street, hardly a mile from where I live today."