Savoring the South: Must-Read Books About the South
When traveling to the American South (especially the Southeast/Deep South) for the first time, I would recommend doing a little reading first to get a taste of the culture. Below is my list of the best books about the South that everyone should read before they visit.
These are not just books set in the South; these books are shaped by the South. The South oozes out from every page.
They are not all refined and gentle, though certainly some are. Some of these books might even make you angry or bring you to tears, but all will provide a deeper understanding of Southern culture past and present before you make a trip there.
Let’s dive in!
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is considered one of the best Southern novels for a reason.
Harper Lee’s classic novel about one man’s quest for personal integrity as he wrestles with his conscience under enormous pressure to cave to social norms in 1930s Alabama won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.
If you’re a fan of To Kill a Mockingbird and also a bit nerdy about writing and publishing you might also want to pick up Go Set a Watchman. This early draft of Mockingbird was published in 2015.
It’s often referred to as a sequel since it’s set 20 years after the major events of Mockingbird, but it was written well before Mockingbird was published.
The film adaptation with Gregory Peck is excellent, but the book should be required reading for everyone on the planet.
Read More → Top Books About Travel and Self-discovery
- Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025
- Voted America’s Best-Loved Novel in PBS’s The Great American ReadHarper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatredOne of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country
- A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Scarlet O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Great balls of fire!
You know the drill.
Along with To Kill a Mockingbird, I would call Gone with the Wind a must-read among books about the Deep South.
In addition to the sweeping story about one woman’s journey from antebellum Georgia privilege through war and poverty, it also provides a peek into the thinking of how 1930s Georgians looked back on the War.
It’s the only book that Margaret Mitchell, an Atlanta native, published during her lifetime. Also like Harper Lee come to think of it.
Gone with the Wind won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. If you’ve only seen the movie, do yourself a favor and read Gone with the Wind.
- Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel
- Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
- This is the tale of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled, manipulative daughter of a wealthy plantation owner, who arrives at young womanhood just in time to see the Civil War forever change her way of life
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the great American novel. Fight me.
Huck’s adventures start in a fictional Missouri town when he decides to fake his own death and set off on a raft down the Mississippi with a runaway slave named Jim.
Their journey takes them through Illinois, Kentucky, and Arkansas. Through it all Huck finds himself constantly wrestling with the values of the society in which he grew up since they don’t square with his personal feelings for and friendship with Jim, a Black man.
Please note that because Twain made broad use of English vernacular in this book, it does include repeated use of the “n” word.
Do not waste your time with any movie adaptations of this book.
- Revel in Huck Finn’s adventure on the Mississippi River in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the American masterpiece by Mark Twain
- “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn
- ’” —Ernest Hemingway A favorite among young readers and adults alike, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1884, is considered to be the author’s masterpiece, as well as one of the best American novels ever written
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, set mainly in Kentucky and Louisiana, has to be considered one of the best books about the South.
This is not a “curl up with a cup of hot chocolate” book. It’s difficult to read. I’ve read it twice and I cried both times.
If you’ve seen The King and I you’re at least familiar with the part of the story in which a young enslaved woman named Eliza runs away to find freedom with her young child.
The name of the title character Uncle Tom, unfortunately, has come to be used against Black people considered to have “sold out” to white people. I’d be willing to bet that none of the people who use “Uncle Tom” in that way have ever read this novel.
It’s hard to overestimate the impact that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had on American literary culture. Only the Bible outsold Uncle Tom in the 19th century. And according to legend, President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe sometime during the Civil War and said, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”
- If you’ve never read this famous classic novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe about the life and martyr’s death of a beautiful person and slave affectionately named Uncle Tom, you’re in for a treat! The story is filled with beautiful symbolism of a love that transcends and someone that gave their life for others
- The cabin he lived in becomes a reminder of those who gave all
- What you will love about this special edition:Beautifully redesigned unique coverClassic story with a modern styleBeautiful cover that isn’t imposing or overbearing, so it will complement any bookshelf, mantle or coffee table decorOriginal TextFull novel with nothing missingNo grammatical errors & typos associated with other editionsEasier to ReadLarger font (10 pt), so you won’t need to squint to enjoyLarger book (6″ X 9″), so it won’t get lost in your reading stackHaving run up large debts, a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby faces the prospect of losing everything he owns
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Jojo Moyes’ The Giver of Stars follows the story of Alice, an Englishwoman newly married to the son of a coal mine owner in rural Depression-era Kentucky.
Looking for a way to expand her horizons, Alice signs up to join the Works Progress Administration Pack Horse Library Project.
The Pack Horse Librarians delivered books to remote parts of Appalachia during the height of the Great Depression.
The project provided employment for some 200 women and reading materials to those with no access to public libraries.
Alice has to learn how to negotiate the rough Eastern Kentucky terrain and deal with some of the townspeople who are not too happy about the library project and the women it employs.
- #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK “A great narrative about personal strength and really captures how books bring communities together
- ” —Reese Witherspoon From the author of the forthcoming Someone Else’s Shoes, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond in Depression-era America Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve, hoping to escape her stifling life in England
- But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004, The Known World is set in antebellum Virginia.
Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it explores slavery from many angles, but also includes the uncommonly explored historical topic of Black slave ownership.
When Black plantation owner Henry Townsend dies, the order he created begins to crumble away. The corruption of race-based slavery infects all around it, both slave and free, Black and white.
The novel is meticulously constructed and beautifully written, deep and dense…but only in a good sense. Definitely not in a “difficult to read” sense. In the sense that the entirely fictional world Jones created feels real and true.
Jones supposedly claimed he did little to no research before drafting, basing his story completely on memories of stories and his own imagination.
- Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize Award and recognized as the best book of fiction in the 21st century by the New York Times, Edward P
- Jones’s The Known World is a debut novel of stunning emotional depth and unequaled literary power and continues to show its importance to the American literary canon
- Henry Townsend, a farmer, boot maker, and former slave, through the surprising twists and unforeseen turns of life in antebellum Virginia, becomes proprietor of his own plantation—as well his own slaves
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Black Boy is one of the few books about which I can honestly claim that I could barely put it down.
Unlike most of the other books on this list, Black Boy is not a novel but a memoir. Published in 1945 it tells the story of the early life of writer Richard Wright.
Wright spent his early years in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee before moving to Chicago.
Black Boy is an important book about Southern life at the time and includes blunt depictions of his childhood in poverty and constant hunger on top of the (of course) overt racism he experienced.
- A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright’s powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson
- When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned
- Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that “if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
Frederick Douglas fled slavery in Maryland to become one of the key figures of the abolitionist movement.
Seven years after he gained his freedom, he wrote his story and published it in 1845. Keep in mind that it was illegal for slaves to learn how to read or write in many states…easier to keep them enslaved without education or the literacy necessary to thrive socially, economically, or politically.
Douglas’ Narrative still stands today as one of the most important pieces of American literature and a pillar of the slave narrative genre.
- A new, beautifully laid-out, easy-to-read edition of Frederick Douglass’s stirring and inspirational memoir, a monumental work that changed history
- The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiographical slave narrative written by the renowned abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass
- It is a powerful account of Douglass’ life of oppression and his journey to freedom
Christy by Catherine Marshall
Set in a fictional Appalachian village deep in rural Tennessee, Christy was based on the work of writer Catherine Marshall’s mother among impoverished Appalachian children in the early 20th Century.
This is one of the classic books about Southern culture and a highly influential work of Christian fiction.
Young Christy Huddleston leaves her comfortable life in Asheville, North Carolina, for a teaching job in remote Smoky Mountain Tennessee.
Throughout the story, she faces incredible challenges among the families in her new home and their poor living conditions.
There’s a little romance too for those who like that kind of thing.
If you enjoyed the sadly short-lived television show of the same name you definitely need to try the book.
- 50th Anniversary Edition of the New York Times Bestselling NovelThe train taking nineteen-year-old teacher Christy Huddleston from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, might as well be transporting her to another world
- The Smoky Mountain community of Cutter Gap feels suspended in time, trapped by poverty, superstitions, and century-old traditions
- But as Christy struggles to find acceptance in her new home, some see her — and her one-room school — as a threat to their way of life
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Delia Owens’ debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about a young girl who essentially raises herself in the marshes of coastal North Carolina.
Kya knows the marshes around her home inside and out. She lives so intimately with the land that she becomes an expert in the local plants and wildlife.
She also lives so isolated a life that few people from the nearby town know her. But when one of the young men she spent time with turns up dead, Kya becomes the prime suspect in his murder.
- NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE—The #1 New York Times bestselling worldwide sensation with more than 18 million copies sold, hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a painfully beautiful first novel that is at once a murder mystery, a coming-of-age narrative and a celebration of nature
- ”For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast
- So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
You can’t explore Southern literature without taking a trip down to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. As I Lay Dying follows the Bundren family’s journey to bury the wife and mother of the family in her hometown. It’s sometimes touching, sometimes rather dark and grim.
This is quintessential Faulkner and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand 20th-century Southern American literature.
It consistently appears on lists of the most important works of American literature and best 20th-century novels. In addition to winning two Pulitzer Prizes (not for As I Lay Dying), Faulkner also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1940.
- A true 20th-century classic from the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Sound and the Fury: the famed harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother
- As I Lay Dying is one of the most influential novels in American fiction in structure, style, and drama
- Narrated in turn by each of the family members, including Addie herself as well as others, the novel ranges in mood from dark comedy to the deepest pathos
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
When white teenager Lily Owens runs away from home with her Black “stand-in mother,” she is taken in by three Black sisters in South Carolina, the Boatwrights.
Set in 1964 against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, young Lily tries to negotiate through her foggy memories surrounding her mother’s death. And she learns something about the importance of female companionship in the absence of her mother.
Sue Monk Kidd’s debut, The Secret Life of Bees, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two and half years. It’s been adapted for both film and stage.
- The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl’s journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed
- When Lily’s fierce-hearted Black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free
- They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry won the 1977 Newberry Medal and is the only book for young readers on this list. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, this story is told from the point of view of a young girl awakening to “how things are in the South.”
Young Cassie Logan is growing up in Southern Mississippi during the height of the Great Depression. Her family owns their own land which accords them some independence despite the racism they face every day.
- Winner of the Newbery Medal, this remarkably moving novel has impressed the hearts and minds of millions of readers
- Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family’s struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice
- And it is also Cassie’s story—Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, The Underground Railroad is a gripping story of a young woman’s journey from slavery to freedom.
Encouraged by tales of the underground railroad, Cora and Caesar plot to flee the Georgia cotton plantation where they’ve been enslaved.
But in Whitehead’s novel, there’s an unusual twist…the underground railroad is literally a secret railroad that runs underground.
Their escape is nearly thwarted not far from the plantation. They manage to get away only when Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Now there’s no going back.
Cora’s journey takes her from Georgia to South Carolina, Tennessee, and beyond.
And each place she stops she encounters a different world and passes through unique perils known to Black men and women in the antebellum South.
- #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “An American masterpiece” (NPR) that chronicles a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South
- One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 YearsThe basis for the acclaimed original Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins
- Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Kathryn Stockett’s runaway bestseller explores the situation of the Black women who worked as domestic help in the civil rights era Deep South.
With the help of a young white writer, two Black women will take on a secret and anonymous project that will shake their community down to the foundation.
The film adaptation of The Help is also excellent and worth watching, though I’d recommend reading the book first. It’s better.
- The #1 New York Times bestselling novel and basis for the Academy Award-winning film—a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
- Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who’s always taken orders quietly, but lately she’s unable to hold her bitterness back
- Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless
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Nevermind, you are right! Fictional town bases on Hannibal. Good job!
🙂
Huck Finn was from Hannibal, Missouri – not a fictional town. It’s where Twain grew up.
The South was not all about race and slavery.
This is the typical left wing reading list.
The South was not the Nazi Germany that many like to proclaim.
Books like “Fried Green tomatoes at the whistle stop cafe” offer an alternative look st the south without the constant political issues.
For the majority before and after the Slavery issue and the Great Depression.this is a more typical view of life and struggles for ALL people in the South.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Although we can agree to disagree, in my opinion it would be a great disservice to my readers to create a list of Southern literature that ignores the great works that explore the single greatest issue that defined the South’s culture, politics and economy for most of the first 250+ years of its history. If you’re looking for Southern lit recommendations that intentionally ignore these issues, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Please correct the grammatical error under the Uncle Tom’s Cabin review. You were commenting about the unfortunate use now of the “Uncle Tom” reference to blacks who have “sold out.” You said the you bet these people had not “every” read, should be “ever read…..”
Your recommendations are spot on, the old retired English teacher has read most, not all, though. (All of the older books, I’ll get right on a few of the more current ones. One thing I think we really agree on, is that all of these books, especially the ones written many years ago, should be looked at with the era in which they were written in mind. Why should anyone get upset about Mark Twain including the “n” word?!!! Irritates me that current standards apply. There is so much to gain from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Twains novels, Gone with the Wind (must read the book, not rely on the movie, I agree), et al.
I imagine the “every/ever” was a typo. (I proofed my way through graduate school, theses, dissertations, and developed the bad habit of correcting every one. Don’t look too close, I’ll blame any errors on my old age.)
Thanks so much for reading! The typo has been fixed. I appreciate your pointing it out.