This story starts in Starkville, Mississippi, in an ordinary lunch café. I’m having meatloaf, I think, when a woman walks through the door—a woman who looks strangely like the bouzouki-wielding, fast-talking Beth Patterson in New Orleans. (Side note: There are no live music clubs in Starkville, Mississippi.) I stare at her, but she doesn’t stare back. She sits down with other meatloaf consumers, and there’s gentle talk that I’m straining to overhear about the weather and domesticated animals....