[chrisser]

Rosie Jonker lives, works, eats, sleeps, reads, and writes in NYC, but she's from Louisiana.

Maybe as a recent West Virginian, I'm not Southern enough to make this observation, but it seems to me Ms Jonker is a New Yorker who happened to be born in the wrong state and has self-corrected for it.

[condi2008]

I did find the paragraph blaming nearly all Southern ills on slavery typically overgeneralized. Much of this can no doubt be chalked up to the age of the author and her current location. Flannery O'Connor's wonderful but shockingly violent stories do tend to slap the self-righteous upside the head.
Regarding that "leisurely pace of life", here's another grim explanation: Southerners Weren't 'Lazy,' Just Infected With Hookworms.
I do detect a genuine fondness for her roots shot through the rest of the story, and her descriptions of people and attitudes are pretty entertainingly spot-on for the most part.