Reviewed by Morgan O’Grady Susan Pickett was on my mind as I crossed Alabama’s state line after leaving West Virginia the same morning: her well-fed babies, her cutting hair in the yard and selling the excess food from her father’s land. She was an Alabama native transplanted to West Virginia during the Depression. Her memoir, […]
“Finding Purple America,” by Jon Smith
September 11, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Sadie Shorr-Parks The songs of American Idol winner Ruben Studdard may not be the typical vehicle for dismantling the myth of the solid South, but author Jon Smith did not intend to write the conventional southern studies book. Clearly disappointed with the current state of American Studies, Southern studies, and the oh-so-hip American […]
September Read of the Month: “The Holy Mark,” by Gregory Alexander
September 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Jessi Lewis The Holy Mark is the story of Joseph Broussard, or “Joe,” who later becomes Father Anthony Miggliore, a priest of the Catholic Church in New Orleans. Joe’s story involves distinct conflicts between Joe’s family and the Catholic community regarding sexual attraction, the Church’s public relations, and the hidden and overt lifestyle […]
“The Mockingbird Next Door,” by Marja Mills
September 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Allen Mendenhall Nelle Harper Lee has been embroiled in lawsuits over the last couple of years and making headlines for her alleged litigiousness. Marja Mills’s The Mockingbird Next Door is a welcome and timely look at Nelle (as her friends and family call her) from another angle, one that offers us a fuller […]
“Lady of the House,” by Lynn Braxton
August 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith Lynn Braxton’s debut novel, Lady of the House, is a sweeping period romance certain to sweep you off your feet. The story is set in the early 1800s in Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans—both cities known for their history, southern culture, and class consciousness. Braxton, the penname of Panhandle resident […]
“Lookaway, Lookaway,” by Wilton Barnhardt
August 26, 2014 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Chris Timmons This must be said as a mandatory prefatory statement: Countless novels have been written about the South, it being such a fertile topic, yet Wilton Barnhardt’s delightful novel Lookaway, Lookaway may top them all. Barnhardt’s novel has it all: an expansive social view of the New South, frequently outrageous and supremely […]