South Toward Home: Tales of an Unlikely Journey

Catch the marvelous imagery in the reading of South Toward Home. Find yourself carried into bygone eras. You will actually encounter stories that span more than eight decades. Experience those remembrances if you have lived through some of these times!Travel with author Alice Joyner Irby in her journey during periods of turbulent cultural and societal change. She reports her attempts to shatter glass ceilings confronting women in the workplace…her role in integrating a university…her participation in the creation of the Job Corps in LBJ’s War on Poverty.Yet, Alice’s roots remain grounded in the South, where she was nurtured and raised in a loving community.In her twenty-six stories, we come to know well this fun-loving young girl and those who shaped the woman she has become. A single mother with a daughter, the author expresses the bond between the two. This is a relationship strengthened over time and deepened through their shared experiences.This book is a rare combination of intimate personal portraits coupled with a pragmatic look at the life surrounding them. An account of watching the McCarthy Hearings is in sharp contrast to the description of the welcoming banks of the Roanoke River in Weldon. Sit a spell and you can hear the church bells that called worshippers on Sunday mornings. Then visit Greensboro, N.C., when UNC-G was The Women’s College…Travel with Alice to Princeton, N.J., for a new job…and follow her back home to North Carolina.Alice shares her own life, but more than that, she pays tribute to those extraordinary people who have sustained her, mentored her, and loved her throughout that lifetime. It is a book written for family about family, blood or not. Crises and joys…stress and well-being…harsh realities and great kindnesses…above all, Hope!We, as readers, are drawn into the stories. We have known the folks encountered on these pages, maybe not personally; but these accounts cause us to reminisce about those who have poured into us the life-giving renewal that enables us to meet challenges, to celebrate life with all it brings, and to look up in a faithfulness that endures. – Mary W., reader