Historical Southern Fiction

Maybe it's just a coincidence that southern writers have a feel for the spice of life. It may be current fiction or historical fiction, but most of these writers have a style that reflects the rigors of life. You don't have to look very far to find a southern writer that grew up in absolute poverty. Rick Bragg, my current all time favorite southern writer, has a flair for writing about his hardscrabble life. Actually, I thought we were poor southerners, until I read Rick's description of growing up poor. I was on easy street compared to Rick.
I've thought about how life in the rural south ingrained certain qualities into a writer, and this is my take: Everyone has life experiences and those events are part of their personality. A young boy from a poor family growing up in the rural south during the great depression, the 1940s or the 1950s encountered life on the edge. Is hard to write about not having food on the table when you've never missed a meal. Or about supplementing your food supply by eating squirrels, rabbits, and even possums. Yes, experiences in the rural south sometime borders on the macabre, but one thing for sure, they color these southern personalities with some vivid memories. Crafting a novel by a southerner is many times just writing memories. John Grisham, A Painted House, certainly comes to mind.
When I originally began to write, it was easy to write a 500 plus page novel, strictly made up of memories---that I took the liberty to stretch and fictionalize. Of course, after a lot of rewriting and editing it was cut down considerably. The Red Scarf, my first published novel. contains many stories that are thinly veiled memories of actual events. In fact, when some of my friends read the novel, they remember these vivid memories because they experienced them.
I guess I may be shortchanging other sections of the country, but maybe not. After all no one ever said it was easy growing up in the south.