Dawn Major in Discussion with Christopher Lowe, author of “Make Some Wretched Fool to Pay”

In Make Some Wretched Fool to Pay (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press 2023), Christopher Lowe unleashes the dark side of “Friday Night Lights,” alongside its cutthroat recruitment tactics, the commercialization of players, and the dynamics of football family legacies. Set in the Deep South where high school football is the heartbeat of small Southern […]

Focus on Mental Health: Donna Meredith Interviews Jody Hobbs Hesler, author of “Without You Here,” and Pat Spears, author of “Hotel Impala”

Introduction Recently I had the painful pleasure of reading two exceptionally fine novels that examine the effects of mentally unstable people on their families. In Jody Hesler’s Without You Here, a niece is haunted by her favorite aunt’s suicide, while Pat Spears’s Hotel Impala delivers a devastating portrait of two children confronting the chaos and […]

Donna Meredith Interviews Betsy Reeder, author of “Broadus Unbound”

Summary of Broadus Unbound Called by the famed Charles Spurgeon “the greatest of living preachers,” John A. Broadus left an indelible signature not only on the Baptist denomination but on a generation. Emerging from the US Civil War as a voice of reason and reconciliation, he traveled, wrote, and tirelessly trained clergy for the urgencies […]

Dawn Major interviews Raymond L. Atkins, A Southern Bard

Introduction: I was an undergrad at Kennesaw State University when I attended my first poetry reading and had the pleasure of hearing Robert Pinsky read. I can’t recall if he had already served out his term as the U.S. Poet Laureate; Pinsky served as Poet Laureate for three consecutive years, so it may have been […]

Bradley Sides Interviews Jen Fawkes, author of Daughters of Chaos

For those readers who believe nothing original or new is being written these days, check out and marvel at Jen Fawkes’s Daughters of Chaos, a shapeshifting, powerhouse novel that balances explorations of history, myth, identity, and monsters. Fawkes’s novel, told in letters and a variety of forms, tells the story of Sylvie Swift as she […]

Donna Meredith Interviews Rachel Hauck, author of Meet Me at the Starlight

Novel Summary: Meet Me at the Starlight (Bethany House Publishers 2024) spans three generations. In 1987, supermodel Harlow Hayes seeks solace in a quaint Florida beach town to heal from a heartbreak that shattered her entire world. To her surprise, she encounters Matt Knight—a Hollywood A-lister with a bad-boy reputation—who has returned to his hometown […]