Research is invigorating and illuminating. Librarians, museum curators, authors, and National Park Service Park Rangers offer a plethora of knowledge necessary to telling historically and culturally accurate and respectful stories. Their wealth of knowledge about Alabama's diverse history is irreplaceable.
My research for my short story for Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women took me back to a place of beloved memories. My mother and I first visited the Natchez Trace Parkway almost ten years ago. We split our travels into two journeys - the Northern Terminus and the Southern Terminus. Each time, we got on the trace at U.S. 72 in Cherokee, Alabama. The first trip took us all the way down to the visitor's center in Tupelo, Mississippi. Shortly thereafter, we went up from Cherokee to Nashville, Tennessee.
Books
The Chickasaws by Arrell M. Gibson, University of Oklahoma Press, 1972
Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives - Volume 2 Edited by Elizabeth Anne Payne, Martha H. Swain, and Marjorie Julian Spruill, The University of Georgia Press, 2010
Websites
"Chickasaws in Alabama" by Greg O'Brien, Encyclopedia of Alabama, 2008