Everyone should have a friend like Margaret Renkl: thoughtful, engaged, compassionate and, above all, acutely observant. Since that's not always possible, the next best thing is to share her company in the diverse and consistently stimulating essay collection Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South.
An offhanded conversation in 2015 led to an invitation to Renkl (Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss) to write her first column for the New York Times. A few columns later, she was offered a monthly slot to write about "the flora, fauna, politics and culture of the American South," hoping to educate those living outside that territory that "there is far more to this intricate region than many people understand."
Arranged by themes that include the natural world, politics and social justice, family and community and arts and culture, Renkl's 59 concise essays demonstrate impressive erudition, especially when she ventures into nature to explore subjects like the revival of the Tennessee coneflower, the decline of pollinators like the monarch butterfly and her disdain for the U.S.'s pesticide-drenched "killer lawns." Her prose is both graceful and evocative, well-attuned to "the unfathomable natural beauty of a place that is still predominantly rural and very often wild."
Renkl--who grew up in rural Alabama and has lived for 35 years in Nashville, and self-identifies as a "believer" and a "liberal Christian"--is at her most passionate and unsparing when she turns her attention to the politics of her native region, and specifically the quest for social justice. One of her favorite targets is the Tennessee General Assembly, as she repeatedly castigates its members for everything from their eagerness to suppress the vote to the "colossal failure of empathy" that has led the state to reject the Medicaid expansion offered under the Affordable Care Act. Despite her willingness to grant that people are "always more complex than the way they vote could ever suggest," on issues like abortion, gun violence, the death penalty and racism, she's an articulate advocate for her unabashedly progressive views.
The collection ends on a softer note, with pieces on the great singer-songwriter John Prine, or her long-delayed (30 years) visit to Elvis Presley's Memphis mansion. There are portions of Graceland, at Last certain to provoke the ire of both the South's fiercest critics and its equally ardent defenders. What they all should be able to agree on is that Margaret Renkl is both unfailingly honest and deeply empathetic in creating the vivid portrait of her home region that emerges organically from these intensely personal and well-informed essays. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Margaret Renkl's 59 masterly essays illuminate the complexity of life in the contemporary American South.