Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta

by Richard Grant

Nowhere else is so poorly understood by outsiders, so unfairly maligned, so surreal and peculiar, so charming and maddening. Individually, collectively, and above all politically, Mississippians have a kind of genius for charging after phantoms and lost causes. Nowhere else in the world have I met so many fine, generous, honorable people, but if you look at the statistics, and read the news stories coming out of Mississippi, the state gives every appearance of being a redneck disaster zone. As

The mayor’s wife described the Delta as, “beautiful, tragic, and totally batshit crazy.”