UNDER MAGNOLIA

Following on the heels of her beloved memoirs of her life in Tuscany, internationally best-selling author Frances Mayes turns her attention to the place that first shaped her: her Georgia hometown of Fitzgerald. UNDER MAGNOLIA is her account of growing up in the South, of leaving it to explore the world, and of returning to it to start a new life there. For most of her adulthood, Mayes called California home, but in recent years, she found herself irresistibly drawn back to the South by family ties and the lure of the lost landscape of her youth.

Inspired by old scrapbooks and her childhood diary, Mayes crafts an honest and affecting ode to family and place and a thoughtful meditation on the ways in which they define us and allow us to define ourselves. Through chronicles of her travels throughout the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia, she examines the South she knew alongside present-day impressions of a changed yet familiar region. With her signature style and grace, Mayes delves deeply into the power of a place and the idea of home, the Southern traditions and chaotic and loving family that ultimately molded her voice and perspective as a writer.