Pell Mellers: Race and Memory in a Carolina Pocosin

"I never met a Johnson cousin until I was forty-seven, the year I met dozens." -- K. Paul Johnson

What began as genealogical research into the author's ancestry soon grew into a fascinating tale with lessons for us all. Among his ancestors, Johnson uncovered: unpunished murderers, infidelities that produced stronger families than formal marriages, entire units of North Carolinians who fought and died to preserve the Union in the Civil War. The tale holds enough plot twists for a half-dozen n...