The book tour is winding to a close, and I’m back to being a writer again after several hectic months of being an author. My feelings are mixed: part hallelujah, part letdown. Being on a book tour is exhilarating, exhausting, fun, tedious, gratifying, occasionally humiliating, and totally consuming. Here are some of the highlights:

Favorite indie bookstore: Lemuria in Jackson, MS

Best meal: Big bloody Porterhouse steaks at Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, MS

Funniest outdoor ad: Seen somewhere in Tennessee or Arkansas, a billboard sponsored by the Council for Healthy Marriages (or something to that effect) showing a man lying under the covers in bed with a dead deer, and a headline that said, “Hunting won’t keep you warm nights.”

Most elegant venue: The Arts Club of Chicago

Favorite radio station: 95.5 Hallelujiah FM in Jackson, MS

Most humbling moment: The live interview I did for a local news program in Memphis where I was bookended by what was clearly the star attraction of that day’s show, a guy eating a 7.5-pound hamburger

Most surreal moment: Sitting between Cokie Roberts and Peter Carey on a dais in an Indianapolis ballroom inexplicably designed to look like a Mexican Village circa 1900, eating lunch in front of 950 women, all with pink quilted book bags

Coolest hotels: The Hotel San José in Austin, TX and The Alluvian in Greenwood, MS

Strangest sight: The life-size diorama of a small T-Rex frolicking with Adam & Eve in paradise at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY

Loveliest views: Oxford, MS as seen from the balcony at City Grocery; the horse farms of Lexington, KY as seen from the plane; and HOME, when I finally got back here after two months on the road

Had an incredibly special event on Saturday: a reading with my dear friends James Cañón and Jennifer Cody Epstein at Hudson Opera House. James’ novel, Tales from the Town of Widows and Chronicles from the Land of Men, debuted in January 2007 (it’s now out in paperback) and Jenn’s novel, The Painter from Shanghai, came out this year a few weeks after Mudbound. The three of us met eight years ago, in our first workshop at Columbia, and wrote our novels simultaneously. James and Jenn were my primary readers, a lame term for two people who read and critiqued so many drafts of Mudbound that they could probably recite it from memory. And of course we all had many doubts along the way that we would ever finish our books and find agents and publishers and become real live authors. So it was really wonderful to read with them and celebrate our mutual success. We were joined by a great crowd of Hudsonians, including friends Tom Swope, Val Shaff, Tom Froese, Maureen Cummins, Sarah Sterling, Carol Derfner, and Marc and Christine Heller. A big merci to Gary Schiro, Joe Herwick and E. Fout for hosting us and beating the drums.

Completed the final lap of my official book tour last week/weekend, beginning with a stop in South Hadley, home of Mt. Holyoke and the excellent Odyssey Bookshop. I’m in Odyssey’s signed first editions program, so I spent a wrist-wilting hour signing 250 copies of Mudbound before the reading. (I did the math just now and I estimate I’ve autographed somewhere around 2,500 copies. You’d think I’d be heartily sick of it, but I’m not. There’s something profoundly satisfying about the act of signing one’s own book that defies description. I suppose that’s my narcissism showing…) Afterward, I joined Odyssey’s gracious owner Joan Grenier, events coordinator Emily Russo and some friends of theirs for an outstanding meal at Food 101 Bar & Bistro. Many thanks to them both for their hospitality and their enthusiastic embrace of Mudbound.

Friday I drove to Wellesley for a few bucolic — if cold and rainy — days at the home of my old college pal Phyllis Spinale. It was an eye-opening glimpse into the life of a full-time mom. She has three kids age 9, 11, and 13, a recently-adopted dog, and a husband, all lovely, and all of whom she looks after and makes nutritious meals for and folds shirts for and drives to lacrosse practice and takes for walks and counsels and consoles with a serenity I found awe-inspiring, while also running five miles a day and, in her spare time, being a one-woman band for Mudbound — which, if every adult in greater Wellesley isn’t already reading it, they soon will be or they’ll have to answer to Phyllis. You amaze me, Phyl. Vive la différence.

Friday night I read at the First Church of Jamaica Plain, an event set up by my buddy Chuck Collins and hosted by the Jamaica Plain Forum. Chuck and I met last fall at the Blue Mountain Center, along with the indefatigable Susan Freireich, who also attended the reading. Both are excellent writers: Susan fiction, Chuck non. He’s a liberal activist who has spent his adult life battling economic inequality (at BMC, Chuck taught us all to sing the union song “Solidarity Forever” to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” — which we all did, passionately if somewhat bemusedly, because it was Chuck leading the choir). We had a crowd of 25+ people at the church, and they actually asked me to read extra passages, which almost never happens. Doesn’t get much better than that for an author on book tour. Thanks to Chuck and to Daniel Moss for setting up the event.

The final event of the weekend was a reading at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Another unusually large crowd, swelled by lots of friends and friends of friends: Phyl, her sis-in-law Sue, Chuck, Susan, my friends Tom Alpern and birthday girl Charlotte Dixon. You’d think with all this support (and after being on book tour for two solid months) I would have felt completely at ease, but in fact I gave one of my worst readings of the tour, at least initially. Stammering, blushing, uh-ing — I could have been running for junior high school treasurer. I pulled out of my nose-dive eventually, but man, what a humbling and excruciating couple of minutes. Thanks to all those who didn’t get up and leave, and to Nathan Hasson for coordinating the event.

I’ve joined Maggie Moran’s “Southern Reading Challenge” for summer 2008. Maggie’s a librarian from Mississippi whose mission is to get more noses in books, specifically Southern books. All you have to do is pledge to read three books set in the South and written by Southerners over the summer, and then blog about them. Join the challenge at http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/

My three books, in no particular order, will be:

The Hamlet by Wm. Faulkner

Smonk by Tom Franklin

Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty ( a reread)