"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift
to you, as you are to them."  

– Desmond Tutu

issi, 33, lives like many in Washington, DC, without ambition and with few close friends. When a gruesome accident on a downtown street leaves her with an inheritance large enough to see the world, she decides to begin in her birthplace, Mississippi, with a grandfather she never knew she had. New and not entirely charming experiences greet Missi everywhere: fire ants, an armadillo, searing heat, and pet gerbils with an alarming tendency to devour their young. But she also encounters a welcoming family delighted to know her and share surprises about her infancy, which also lacks fabled Southern charm. Missi comes to love her family’s flavorful cooking and their knack for making a lot from a little. At the same time, it unsettles her to know they love her simply because she is family. She keeps waiting to make a misstep. They are so different from her, and love has never been something Missi has come by easily. She wonders: What should she do with all this love?

“Ain’t this the life?” she asks. I consider this for a minute — working at a gas station in the middle-of-nowhere Mississippi, suffering hot flashes bad enough you have to practically refrigerate yourself, and taking solace in a blow-up pool with a complete stranger? Then I look at Dolly and the expression on her face. I am not sure I have ever seen a look of such contentment on another person in my entire life.

“Yes, it is,” I tell her. And I mean it.