Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home

Lise's is a beautifully told story that is as much about completing relationships as it is about the beauty of rural Georgia landscape, and it's people. I found myself immersed in the culture and history of the rural south and enjoyed every minute of it.

Lise's story reminds us that there is yet much to do as one nears the end of life. It's never too late to build or mend a relationship with someone we love.

My favorite part of my job as a hospice nurse is to hear the life stories of my patients and their families. I often work well past my scheduled hours to hear the histories and life lessons they have to share, unconcerned that it's time I won't be paid for.

Pig Candy takes my love of biographical storytelling and turns it into a compelling memoir of Jim Crow south, racial segregation, family, and love.

Lise Funderburg, a mixed race child, grew up knowing little about her strict black father. Having divorced her mother when Lise was a toddler, he remained a strict and elusive figure throughout most of her life. When her father is diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer later in life, Lise and her father begin a series of joint travels that take them from chemotherapy treatments in Pennsylvania to the farm her father had purchased in rural Georgia, where he grew up.

Through a series of pilgrimages to the farm, Lise learns of her father's childhood in the segregated south. She embarks on a journey of discovering her father and begins to understand the man she has loved and feared her entire life.