Parsham in The Reivers (Location)

As Ned puts it, calling it "Possum," the "hamlet" of Parsham (162) is "where the railroad comes up from Jefferson and crosses the Memphis one where you changes [railroad] cars" (116). The place where travelers on the northbound train from Yoknapatawpha change for the westbound train to Memphis has appeared in earlier Faulkner fictions. In Sanctuary, for example, that happens at Holly Springs (a real town in north Mississippi). Parsham is explicitly located in "Tennessee" (215), and it seems more likely that if Faulkner based it on a real place, that place is Grand Junction, Tennessee, where the annual National Championship for bird dogs was held at the time of the story. Lucius describes Parsham as a "community composed of one winter-resort hotel and two stores and a cattle shute and a depot at a railroad intersection and the churches and schools and scattered farmhouses of a remote countryside" (189). See the novel's 14 specific Parsham locations on the inset map.