'We Are Finally Coming to Claim Our Writers'

To see Harris's old haunts, seek out Turnwold Plantation, where a teenage Harris worked on a small weekly newspaper called the Countryman. Today, it's a private residence marked with a state historic marker.

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In Eatonton, which has fewer than 10,000 residents, the newly expanded courthouse stands prominently in the town square. A few blocks south, a statue of Brer Rabbit marks the Uncle Remus Museum. Housed in preserved slave cabins, displays in two rooms feature Harris's mementos and early editions of his work, as well as wood carvings based on his tales.

Milledgeville: Flannery O'Connor

Drive less than 20 miles south down Highway 441 and you'll find Andalusia, the farm where Flannery O'Connor lived out the last 13 years of her short life with her mother, her peacocks and her typewriter.

A metal gate guards a dirt-and-gravel road that leads to the old dairy farm. O'Connor, diagnosed with lupus in 1951, moved with her mother and lived on the 544-acre estate until her death in 1964 at age 39. The two-story white house, including the bedroom where she wrote, is open to visitors, and if you stroll around the farm's outbuildings, you'll find pastoral settings like those in O'Connor's frequently anthologized short stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "Revelation."

Four miles south in Milledgeville, the O'Connor Room in the museum at the Georgia College & State University library features her desk, paintings and books. Serious fans of her work often visit her grave in nearby Memory Hill Cemetery.

Beyond O'Connor's footprints, Milledgeville, the state capital from 1807 to 1868, is a quaint college and state government town. A walking tour includes the former Governor's Mansion and the reconstructed Old State Capitol among many architecturally unique homes and buildings. The downtown area bordering the college has revived in the past decade with new restaurants, bars and shops.

Columbus: Carson McCullers

From Milledgeville, Carson McCullers's home is about 130 miles southwest along the fall line, the geographic boundary that passes through Macon and marks where Georgia's piedmont flattens out into its coastal plain. Columbus, once primarily known as a mill town, is now a mid-size city of 185,000, sitting on the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

The Smith-McCullers House Museum is in an old residential neighborhood where the author lived from age 8 until she moved to New York when she was 17. McCullers's old room holds a conference table for Columbus State University classes (the university owns the home), and glass cases along the wall display her books, records, pictures -- including ones of her with director John Huston -- and her typewriter.

"I tell my students this is high holy ground," Fussell said.

Only in recent years has local appreciation for her work grown, Fussell said. In 2004, Oprah Winfrey selected McCullers's "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" for her book club, and each year the Carson McCullers Center presents various events featuring the author's work.

Moreland: Erskine Caldwell

Driving the 65 miles from Columbus north to Moreland offers two diverse routes. The road more traveled is a fast shot up Interstate 185 to I-85, indistinct four-lane highways marked with billboards and pine trees that could be most any Southern place. A better option: the slower but much more scenic and less busy route of U.S. 27 Alternate.

But beware. It's easy to miss Moreland, home of the Erskine Caldwell Birthplace and Museum. The circa-1879 home where Caldwell was born was in desperate condition in 1990 when the city bought and moved it from White Oak, a rural community five miles away, where Caldwell's father was a Presbyterian minister.