Norma Watkins
Norma Watkins's memoir, The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure (University Press of Mississippi, $28.00), recounts being raised at a popular Mississippi spa for proper white people, run by her aunt. Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise. Yet young Norma wonders at a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal while forbidding them from sitting with whites to eat. Later, a fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change. When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind?
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