A peaceful settlement, a Tartt response.

In the later 1830s, with the coming of white settlers and the railroad, two cities arose side by side in this particular spot, Tullahoma and Pittsburgh, with a neutral zone called Rabbittrack that ran between them. When Pittsburgh was granted the first post office, furious residents of Tullahoma made a midnight raid over the border to haul the building to their side of Rabbittracks. In the morning, indignant (and armed) residents of Tullahoma stormed Pittsburgh to reclaim their building.

The resulting melee was stopped only when a local minister stepped in to suggest a union of the two towns; he even arranged a real wedding between an agreeable couple to symbolize the union. “Grenada,” a Native American word meaning “united” or “married” was chosen as the new town’s name. Today, you can still travel Rabbittrack, only it is now known as “Line Street,” where many of the city’s most beautiful homes are a highlight of the city’s walking/motor tour.

Two female novelists of note were born and brought up here in Grenada: Gloria Norris, a well-regarded fiction writer who also served as editor of Book of the Month; and Donna Tartt. Tartt’s first novel, The Secret History, a thriller set in a small northeastern college, was a publishing sensation, and her reputation was assured with a second novel, The Little Friend, a murder mystery set in a small Mississippi town.

Real-life death and mayhem came to Grenada during the Civil War and afterwards in the yellow fever epidemic that claimed the lives of nearly 90% of the town’s population. Today, you can still see the sites where Confederate fortifications, at least for a time, kept Grant out of Vicksburg. You’ll also want to take a walk through the city’s historic cemetery, where Civil War dead lie side by side with yellow fever victims in a setting as evocative as a Tartt ghost in The Little Friend:

“…the moping bird dog, puzzled for several weeks by her master’s death, recast as the grief-stricken Queenie of family legend, who searched relentlessly for her beloved throughout the house and howled, inconsolable, in the pen all night; who barked in joyous welcome whenever the dear ghost approached in the yard, a ghost that only she could perceive.”

There have been many ghosts in Mississippi laid to rest in recent years, but the conflict between man and nature—and man against government—was accorded an early reconciliation along this route all the way back in the 1940s. It was then that the U.S. Corps of Engineers realized that the recipe for flood control of the Mississippi River included one simple step: add more water.