Alabama, One Big Front Porch

In her inimitable storytelling style, Mrs. Windham takes readers on a tour of the history, people, and places of the “heart of Dixie.” First published in 1975 and long out of print, Alabama: One Big Front Porch is now reissued in a handsome new edition. Alabama, they say, is like one big front porch where folks gather on summer nights to tell tales and to talk family. Everybody, they say, is kin to everybody else—or knows somebody who is. It’s a sprawling porch, stretching from the Tennessee River valley to the sandy Gulf beaches with its sides sometimes slipping over into Mississippi and Georgia. The tale-tellers don’t all look alike and they don’t all talk alike, but the stories they tell are all alike in their unmistakable Southern blend of exaggeration, humor, pathos, folklore, and romanticism. Family history is woven into the stories. And pride. And humor. Always humor.