Member-only story
Southern Travel
Southern Noir by Car: A Grit-Stained Road Trip Through the Dark Literary Heart of the South
Drive through the shadowy landscapes of Jesmyn Ward, James Lee Burke, Flannery O’Connor and more, tracing crime and gothic fiction where it first took root — in the haunted towns and backroads of the American South
* If you don’t have a Medium membership, you can read the story for free here
The journey kicks off with a map, but not the kind you grab at a gas station. It’s more like a collage of dog-eared paperbacks and crumbling paper towns, some real, some imaginary, all heavy with humidity and haunted by characters who stick around long after you’ve turned the last page. To follow the blood trail of Southern noir, you don’t need a passport, just a tank of gas, a love for stories, and a curiosity to see what’s rotting underneath those towering magnolia trees.
This road trip’s not about sparkle; it’s about scorch. The South in these stories isn’t all romanticized fantasy. It’s hot, poor, violent, segregated, beautiful, and broken all at once. It’s the South of Jesmyn Ward’s Bois Sauvage, James Lee Burke’s New Iberia, Flannery O’Connor’s…
