Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South

Winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

For the past four years, Margaret Renkl’s columns have offered readers of The New York Times a weekly dose of natural beauty, human decency, and persistent hope from her home in Nashville. Now more than sixty of those pieces have been brought together in this sparkling new collection.

“People have often asked me how it feels to be the ‘voice of the South,’” writes Renkl in her introduction...