Crackers: A Southern Memoir

Bill Merritt grew up in Atlanta, Georgia during the turbulent years between the end of WW II and the Vietnam War. This was the time of Martin Luther King and Ivan Allen; the time of Lester Maddox, the Temple Bombing, great moral certainties, Elvis, Klan rallies, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a corrupt political system, and a man named Armstrong walking on the moon. Merritt's family is eccentric and colorful, occasionally courageous, often self-centered. This is the story of how the government took the land they'd lived on for nine generations to use as a place to brew poison gas during WW II, then changed it to Redstone Arsenal to build rockets to the moon; how the family was caught up in the Orly Air Crash and the Vietnam War; and the way the Civil Rights Revolution looked to Southerners: to decent people trying to honor their heritage while realizing the time had come to let go of parts of that heritage, and how difficult that letting go was made by the outsiders who most wanted change.