Ray, Janisse. Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

Milkweed. May 2003. c.308p. permanent paper. LC 2002152810. ISBN 1-57131-272-2. $22. AUTOBIOG

Ray (Ecology of a Cracker Childhood) returns to her rural Georgia home after many years' absence to reclaim her grandmother's ramshackle farm and find wholeness through family, community, and nature. Things are not as she remembers, however. Her beloved longleaf pine forests are being logged, and rural life is disappearing as people flee to the cities. Through a series of stories, pieced together like the squares in a patchwork quilt, Ray reveals her strict fundamentalist upbringing and later rebellion, her …