To some Americans, Mississippi is the place where segregation took its ugliest form and struck most savagely at its challengers. But to many Americans, Mississippi is also home, and it is this paradox that native Anthony Walton explores in this resonant work of travel writing, history, and memoir. Traveling from the Natchez Trace to the cotton fields of the Delta, and from plantation houses to air-conditioned shopping malls, Walton challenges us to see Mississippi's memories of comfort alongside its legacies of slavery and the Klan. Offering a microcosm of the state, Walton weaves in the stories of his family, as well as those of patricians and sharecroppers, racist demagogues and civil rights workers, novelists and bluesmen.