In 'House of Smoke,' John T. Edge sets his life at center stage amid a changing South

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — In many ways, "House of Smoke" is something of a departure for John T. Edge.

Make no mistake: the longtime writer and host of "TrueSouth" on SEC Network does spend a lot of time writing about food, from burgers at the old Ollie's in Birmingham to Little People's Place in New Orleans' Treme neighborhood. For decades, Southern food has been a subject Edge has continually come back to and obsessed over, writing about it in magazine pieces to several books and his work with the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi.

However, with "House of Smoke," Edge's new memoir set for release Tuesday, the writer's own life takes center stage, a changing South as the background.

"To understand our life as modern Southerners, we are compelled to lay our liv