After hearing that her father is in the hospital, Emma returns to her hometown. There, she bumps into her first love, Casey, who turned her down when she confessed her feelings eight years ago. Devastated, Emma had gathered what little money she’d saved and left town. Now she’s a grown, independent woman with her own business in Chicago, but being around Casey makes her feel like a lovestruck teenager again. Why do his eyes burn with passion when he looks at her? And will Emma be able to tell him her deepest secret?

The first full-length biography of one of the most unlikely figures in twentieth-century American literature, a writer who emerged from a dirt-poor South Georgia tenant farm and went on to create a singularly unique voice of fiction.