Low Country: A Memoir

by J. Nicole Jones

Overview

"From horse thieves to hurricanes, from shattered Southern myths to fractured family ties, from Nashville to Myrtle Beach to Miami, Low Country is a lyrical, devastating, fiercely original memoir" of one family's changing fortunes in the Low Country of South Carolina (Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost).

J. Nicole Jones is the only daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, a family that grew rich building the hotels and seafood restaurants that draw tourists to Myrtle Beach. But at home, she is surrounded by violence and capriciousness: a grandfather who beats his wife, a barman father who dreams of being a country music star. At one time, Jones's parents can barely afford groceries; at another, her volatile grandfather presents her with a fur coat.

After a girlhood of extreme wealth and deep debt, of ghosts and folklore, of cruel men and unwanted spectacle, Jones finds herself face to face with an explosive possibility concerning her long-abused grandmother that she can neither speak nor shake. And through the lens of her own family's catastrophes and triumphs, Jones pays homage to the landscapes and legends of her childhood home, a region haunted by its history: Eliza Pinckney cultivates indigo, Blackbeard ransacks the coast, and the Gray Man paces the beach, warning of Hurricane Hazel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948226868
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,051,830
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

J. Nicole Jones received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University, and has since held editorial positions at VICE magazine and Vanity Fair. Her viral essay defending the art of memoir, "Why's Everyone So Down on the Memoir?" was published by the Los Angeles Review of Books and Salon, and her reviews and other writings have appeared in magazines including Harper's. She grew up in South Carolina, and now lives in Brooklyn and Tennessee.

Table of Contents

1 While I Breathe, I Hope 3

2 Treasure Maps 17

3 Horse Thieves & Millionaires 35

4 Golden Gloves 55

5 Waccamaw Academy 75

6 The Ferry or the Road? 101

7 Aces over Eights 123

8 Four of a Kind 141

9 Whiskey Jones 161

10 Hurricane Games 173

11 The Suckers List 197

12 The Gray Man 213

13 Nana's House 221

Acknowledgments 231

Editorial Reviews

04/26/2021

Jones debuts with an intoxicating if puzzling story of her dysfunctional South Carolina family, who ran a mini-empire of hotels and seafood restaurants in Myrtle Beach, S.C. “The South does not own tragedy, but it sure seems to have taken a liking to the region,” she writes. To illustrate, Jones strings together half-true tales of her unconventional upbringing, bankrolled “by tourists who anointed themselves with suntan oil.” She recalls how her father “left us to move to Nashville more than a few times,” in search of country-music stardom, but his and her mother’s dreams were quashed by her “Granddaddy,” a violent, tight-fisted patriarch whose employees were “as afraid of him as we were.” A notorious bootlegger, he opened a number of motels, pancake houses, and bars, where her dad and uncles worked as bartenders and waiters, and tended to arcade games. Her nana endured a lifetime of abuse at the hands of Granddaddy, until a fall left him with his “scalp cut wide open.” From here, Jones gambles on a speculative climax to her family’s story that fails to deliver. While her sentences are finely wrought, they can’t mask a weak narrative spine. This tale of a tourist-trap childhood would make a great beach read, if it weren’t for the unfocused delivery. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

An Electric Literature Most Anticipated Debut of the Year
A Write or Die Tribe Most Anticipated Book of the Year
A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of Next Year

"The daughter of a country music star explores her roots and even the topography of her native land in this coming-of-age story of a past she's not always proud of." —Zibby Owens, Good Morning America

"Like listening to a country music song written by Dostoyevsky (lots of crime, but the wrong folks getting punished), with Tom Robbins as his side man. And a little Tennessee Williams thrown in . . . Many a passage of this familial strife and personal coming-of-age chronicle fairly hums on the page, amplified by sharp observation, razor-edge emotion and a delicious turn of phrase . . . A triumph of style as of substance." —Bill Thompson, The Post and Courier

"J. Nicole Jones' devastating memoir examines the realities of living in a picture-perfect, privileged family where nothing is as it seems to the public eye." —K.W. Colyard, Bustle

"With the prose of a poet, Jones paints a vivid picture of an unorthodox life in an unconventional place." —Suzanne Van Atten, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, A Most Anticipated Southern Book of the Year

"In a year where there have been countless standout memoirs, this one lingers due to how Jones presents her life . . . Low Country feels raw. In a good way. As beautiful as it is, it feels as if nothing was covered up with language. It’s all there, the beautiful and the ugly." —Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful

"Richly detailed and atmospheric . . . Animated by equal measures of rigorous self-awareness and ample respect for mystery, Low Country becomes an engrossing, harrowing read." —Emily Choate, Chapter 16

"With her memoir, Low Country, Jones has succeeded in the role of family archivist, imploring us to see that the story of the Jones family is the story of South Carolina, and the story of J. Nicole Jones is the story of the women who preceded her. Low Country teaches the ways family is born out of place, and the ways we are born out of each other." —Ray Levy Uyeda, Zyzzyva

"A storyteller from a long line of Southern storytellers, Jones forgoes tidy narratives and traditional story arcs. Her childhood was way too chaotic for that . . . With childlike wonder, Jones pulls back the Spanish moss to reveal the swampy muck of her youth and blends it with tall tales, weather reports, history lessons, and family lore in captivating, lyrical prose that carries the reader along like a slow river water park ride on a lazy, sunny day." —Suzanne Van Atten, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Jones’ attention to language is what makes this memoir a stunning read . . . At times amusing and other times heartbreaking, her care with language shines through in every page . . . Jones provides a brilliant look into the cracks of a family, channeling the folktales and sayings from her ancestors, and bringing them to the page." —Anita Gill, Chicago Review of Books

"Gorgeous, ambling passages that veer from the beach to the bar, from crumbling edifices of lost wealth to secret rooms filled with dolls . . . A tangled memoir told as a tall tale and as true as lived experience . . . It is impossible not to lose yourself in the story of a young, whip-smart girl, who is trying to make sense of this world of men, a world where the best thing women can hope for is to return and haunt the territory." —Hilary Leichter, Literary Hub

"Ghosts and legends swirl in an affecting family memoir . . . A captivating debut . . . [Jones'] confidential asides to readers create a genuine sense of intimacy. Lyrical prose graces a deftly crafted narrative." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 

"Tinged with folklore and history . . . Jones’ style feels steeped in storytelling and oral tradition . . . Poetic and intimate." —Booklist

"Lyrical . . . Jones crafts a gothic setting for a literary memoir, while maintaining an invitingly informal narrative voice . . . A haunting memoir with poetic prose that will appeal to a large audience, owing to its interesting subject and skillful writing." —Library Journal

"A Southern song of love and loss rendered in language both gossamer and precise, Low Country is what happens when one family's dreams, gossip and ghost stories meet the only writer capable of weaving them together. Harrowing, beautiful and bold, the music of this memoir lingers long beyond the last page." —Allie Rowbottom, author of JELL-O Girls

From the Publisher

04/01/2021

In a haunting, lyrical narrative, journalist Jones depicts the history of her family, set against the backdrop of South Carolina. Interspersing stories of the ghosts who haunt the South Carolina Low Country and skeletons from her family's past, Jones crafts a gothic setting for a literary memoir, while maintaining an invitingly informal narrative voice. With a series of vivid snapshots, she charts the rise of her family's wealth as they acquired beachfront properties, as well as the hidden tolls of domestic violence and drug abuse. The author's writing shines when recounting memories of spending days and nights at her grandmother's house, as well as stories of Jones's father who tries to break (although he does not always succeed) the cycle of violence that he experienced from his own father. Threaded throughout are stories of the infamous pirates and long-suffering women who gave the Low Country its ghost story-rich history. VERDICT Jones's gift for spinning a tale is readily apparent, and her intertwining the history of the Low Country with her own familial history gives the book depth. A haunting memoir with poetic prose that will appeal to a large audience, owing to its interesting subject and skillful writing.—Stacy Shaw, Denver

Library Journal

★ 2021-01-19
Ghosts and legends swirl in an affecting family memoir.

Making a captivating debut, Jones recounts growing up in coastal South Carolina amid alligators, water moccasins, and Venus’ flytraps, seedy bars and souvenir shops; where raging hurricanes pummeled the shore and strong-willed ghosts haunted the land. While her relatives became wealthy from the tourist trade in Myrtle Beach, her own family eked out a living, “beaten down by one bad break after another, surviving as always due to the generosity of family until it was too much effort to imagine escaping.” The disparities between rich and hardscrabble were as blatant to her as those between men and women. “I come from a line of women,” she writes, “for whom being walked all over and jumped on for the fun of cruelty was progress.” Nowhere was this cruelty more evident than in her paternal grandparents’ marriage. “Granddaddy’s violence needed no provocation,” writes Jones about the physical beatings that plagued his wife, sons, and grandsons. “I came to understand,” she writes, “from the first time I saw him raise a hand to Nana, that his inner well of fury ran too deep to be contained in just one body, and that the terrifying anger behind his violence was the spring of his other most defining quality, his racism.” If her grandfather represented fearsome patriarchy, Jones, even as a young girl, felt oppressed by sexism. Dolled up with her hair curled, she was pushed in a circuit of pageants “that fostered all the little girls of future means.” Education, she realized early, would be her escape: “though I wasn’t sure where that was, I knew that it had to be different and far away” from Myrtle Beach. The author also lovingly portrays her feckless, hard-drinking father, who aspired to country-music stardom; her mother, often anguished and overwhelmed; and her beloved Nana. Her confidential asides to readers create a genuine sense of intimacy.

Lyrical prose graces a deftly crafted narrative.

Kirkus Reviews