Missed Generation:
Claiming My Mississippi Heritage
by Giulia L. Saucier
Trade Paper: ISBN:
978-1-59663-669-9
$15.95
SPECIAL PRICE $13.95
Imprint: Seaboard Press 6" x 9", 252pp
Can heritage slipped sideways through a closing door be rightfully
claimed? This memoir explores possible answers when the author, after many
years abroad, marries a longtime native of Mississippi and returns to the
home of her ancestors. In 1981 the author settled in South Mississippi on
her husband’s tree farm. Over 100 years earlier, her maternal
great-grandmother—tragically widowed on her wedding day—left Mississippi
for North Carolina. Although she remarried, her children, grandchildren
and great-grandchildren were long-removed from their heritage in the
Magnolia state. The author’s fortuitous marriage and relocation brought
her back to the doorstep of this heritage, though for many years she did
not claim it.
Missed Generation describes a Mississippi most Americans do not know; one that is far-removed from slaves, cotton and Delta plantations. Much of the state’s history concerns the original settlers—English, Scots and Irish—who left the Southern Piedmont to settle in Mississippi and whose traditions explain much of the state’s culture. Walker Percy, after all, claimed that “it is questionable that Mississippians are very different from other Americans.” This memoir focuses on the lives of those “independent, egalitarian, and proud” rural inhabitants who were far more influential than, in the words of one southern historian, the “Natchez baronial planters.” It is their heritage the author now claims.