Due South: Dispatches from Down Home

by R. Scott Brunner and Scott R Brunner

Book Overview

"Southerners respect tradition, know the value of a good story. We admire the written word because we still have among us some who are not too far removed from a time when our land was ravaged, our... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375502556
• ISBN13: 9780375502552
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 151 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The spirit of the deep south!

As a native of Jackson, MS I am especially fond of this book. Mr. Brunner has written a wonderful, funny book that I would recommend to anyone interested in southern humor.

Dispatches from the south I still miss after 27 years

I picked up this book one day and decided to give it a read because of the Fannie Flagg blurb on the front. What a treat! R. Scott Brunner has pulled together a collection of southern life that brings out the best, the rediculous and the beloved...and a few things we try to keep hidden. From the 'Bless your heart' rule, to the neighbors who tried to befriend Eudora Welty, there is a bit of everyone you know and love in the words. Never pandering to what the popular belief of what a Southerner should be, he points out what there is to love (and to laugh about) around us, the sights and smells and foods and sounds and people all evoke a south I miss every day of my life. In all this he has also managed to include, or rather infuse the pieces with a gentle belief in the goodness of folks, and some inspiration gleened from everyday. A real charmer of a book.

Southern Comfort

To read Due South is to close your eyes and smell the night- blooming Jasmine, to feel the tug at the end of your fishing line and to once again dream of holding your Mama's hand as you both sallied forth on a sweet, summer Sunday afternoon. I laughed and cried at Mr. Brunner's memories, because as a fellow Alabamian, I have many of the same long-ago dreams floating around in my mind. Please don't stop here, keep writing until every good rememberance is recorded for your children and mine. This book is, without doubt, the best Christmas gift I received. This man can WRITE.

A book that makes me long to return to where I was born.

Mr. Brunner and I graduated from the same small liberal arts school in Montevallo, Alabama --- almost 30 years apart. But his nostalgia rings true. People, places, food, accents --- all these were the same in my generation as in his. There IS a southern mystique that will always endure and Scott has found a beautiful yet simple way to describe it.

I loved the humorous, warmly touching view of southern life.

I realize that I must be prejudiced in my opinion of Mr. Brunner's book because I have known most of the people he has written of in this book all of my 52 years. Therefore I can say that I know the essays are truthful, touching, funny, extremely descriptive, insightful and wonderful. His descriptions of life in the "slow lane" make you want to go back to a slower pace where folks have the opportunity to appreciate the true and inner beauty in their life and in the lives of those around them. Bravo, Scott Brunner!