April Read of the Month: “March with Me,” by Rosalie T. Turner

Reviewed by Philip K. Jason This novel portrays the outer and inner worlds of two young women growing up in Birmingham, Alabama when it became the flashpoint of the Civil Rights Movement. The chapters contain subsections that alternate the consciousnesses of Letitia and Martha Ann, one black, one white, as they process the momentous changes […]

January Read of the Month: “A Land More Kind Than Home,” by Wiley Cash

  Reviewed by Philip K. Jason Set in rural Madison County, North Carolina in the mid-1980s, this quietly gorgeous novel is most remarkable for its exquisitely rendered sense of place. Mr. Cash not only gives us every kind of sensory news about the community in which he locates his story, but he also paints the […]

Philip K. Jason Interviews Amy Hill Hearth

PJ: Tell me a bit about your personal experiences with Naples. AHH:  My husband grew up in Naples. He is a 1968 graduate of Naples Senior High School. In fact, the character “Judd” in my novel is based loosely on my husband, Blair Hearth, when Blair was 12 years old. The lead character, Jackie, was inspired by my late mother-in-law. The […]

“Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society,” by Amy Hill Hearth

Reviewed by Phil Jason This review also appears in Florida Weekly. One can feel the immense joy of Amy Hill Hearth’s engagement in her first novel. It radiates through every scene and through every page. Sometimes, an exceptional writer finds an exceptional premise, and the result is a truly exceptional book. Such is the case with […]

September Read of the Month: “Keowee Valley,” by Katherine Scott Crawford

Reviewed by Philip K. Jason An independent woman; a lush frontier environment; the approach of war; and a romance of opposites are only some of the ingredients in Ms. Crawford’s ambitious first novel. Combining a style that is frequently lyrical, abundant historical research that has been well-absorbed and woven into the fiction with authority, and […]

April Read of the Month: “The Not Yet,” by Moira Crone

Review by Philip K. Jason University of New Orleans Press. 272 pages. $15.95 Imagining a Mississippi Delta area significantly transformed by decades of ferocious hurricanes, Moira Crone takes us to a realm of islands where immortals rule and the rest live lives of aspiration or rebellion in a caste-bound, static society. Who wouldn’t want to […]