Coming through the fire / C. Eric Lincoln -- What do you do for the place? / Patricia Foster -- The truth the heart knows / Fannie Flagg -- Swing low : a memoir / Mary Ward Brown -- The humanistic black heritage of Alabama / James Haskins -- Growing up a poet in Alabama / Andrew Glaze -- Stalking an early life / Helen Norris -- Learning to swim / Wayne Greenhaw -- The other sun of God / Nanci Kincaid -- The ghosts in my grandmother's attic / Robert Inman -- Alabama breakdown / Andrew Hudgins -- The first place / Phyllis Alesia Perry -- A half mile of road in north Alabama / Rodney Jones -- When the Opry was in Ryman and we still believed in God / William Cobb -- The heart of Dixie / Frye Gaillard -- Thunderhoof and the mantel clock / Sena Jeter Naslund -- Growing up in Alabama : a meal in four courses, beginning with dessert / Charles Gaines -- Coming home / Judith Hillman Paterson -- Epilogue : regional particulars and universal implications / Albert Murray -- Afterword / Mark Kennedy.