Born Southern and Restless is an engaging personal narrative about growing up in the South and leaving that region to explore a larger' world. The first generation of her family to attend college, Kat Meads breaks with long-time family tradition and leaves her agrarian roots' to wander rootless: around the country. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and I gotta ramble,' she writes in the books's opening essay. These essays give us a writer who is able to take us along as she lives in various places and supports herself through various odd jobs -- as a potato grader, an artists' model, a secretary, a part-time college instructor. She gives us a wealth of interesting characters -- her father, grandmother, neighbours and relatives, people she meets during her wandering.