Having lived in the deep South, which was only decades from the Civil War, as a child, I can attest to the authenticity of much of the film. The culture had not changed all that much except for the absence of slavery and the poverty left by the war. I love the film and the book . They speak to my6 heart because I recognize a part of myself in it. It’s sort of like when people say about Sarah Palin,”She’s like me.” You know what you feel even if you can’t quite put your finger on it.
I worked in Virginia with a woman from old Virginia stock. Her grandmother told her the story of her great-great grandmother who ran guns across Yankee lines on horseback. When challenged by Yankee pickets she galloped off. They fired, whether into the air or at her in vain is a fact lost to history. Her grandmother ended the story, dripping with indignation at the ungentlemanly Yankees, “... and her a mother!”