McEacherns' Farm and Vicinity in Light in August (Location)

The McEacherns live on a farm in a very rural area, but near a town with a courthouse. The novel doesn't give us a clear way to know where this area might be. It takes McEachern and Joe "all" of a day traveling in a "light buggy" to get there from Memphis (143), but the novel gives no definitive indication what direction they travel in. However, if we assume McEachern drives east to take Joe "home" (144), it's not impossible that Faulkner has Joe grow up near the real town of Holly Springs, Mississippi, which appears under its real name in Sanctuary and as "Memphis Junction" on Faulkner's 1936 map of Yoknapatawpha; like the town in the novel, Holly Springs has a courthouse and was an important railroad town. If that is the place Faulkner had in mind, it would mean that Joe actually grows up not far from Jefferson, where he dies, and that the "circle" of his life that Joe himself feels trapped in is, geographically, almost a literal one (339) - but all this is very speculative. See the inset map for the 15 locations that the novel associates with McEachern's place and the nearby town in chapters 7-9.