Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

In this groundbreaking book, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: ''deceit and scandal . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder.'' In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel.