Introduction: stories of belonging -- The stage of Southern history -- Childhood, remembered queerly -- Sewanee -- Southerner in Europe -- Harvard -- The senator's son -- On love, poetry, and war -- The soldier -- The native and nostalgic poet -- The Klan -- On god, sin, and the Mediterranean -- The flood and after -- Uncle Will -- Samoa, sharecropping, and race -- The autobiographer -- Epilogue: on sex, history, and trespassing.