Review by Donna Meredith Dream Chaser, by Pat Spears, delivers an iconic figure as the protagonist: a Southern blue collar drunk struggling to hold onto a job and his family. That’s hardly a new story, but the author renders Jesse McKnight with such compassion and prose so perfect that Dream Chaser easily ranks as one […]
July Read of the Month: “I Watched You Disappear,” by Anya Krugovoy Silver
July 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Sara Hughes When offering advice to writers, Henry James said, “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.” In her second collection of poetry, I Watched You Disappear, Anya Silver demonstrates that she is a poet “on whom nothing is lost.” Constantly observing life through the lens of memory and […]
“Licensed to Lie,” by Sidney Powell
June 26, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Brandon Stump What do the Enron prosecutions, the prosecution of the late and former United States Senator Ted Stevens, and the suicide of a young Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney have in common? Sidney Powell’s Licensed to Lie reveals the answer. Frustrating and at times tedious, overly long with too many intricate legal […]
June Read of the Month: “Rough Beast,” by Tim Peeler
June 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Danilo Thomas Tim Peeler’s twelfth book, Rough Beast, issued by Future Cycle Press, concentrates on the life of Larry, a holler boy raised viciously. By utilizing narrative, anecdote, exemplar, and a perspective shift that attempts an objective glance at the subject matter, the four separate sections of poems that comprise Rough Beast parse […]
“A Shelter of Others,” by Charles Dodd White
June 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Sam Slaughter In his second novel, Charles Dodd White once again drives deep down the roads of his fictional Sanction County, an area in the Appalachian Mountains where, it seems, the ties that bind do so until circulation of the right and the real cuts off and the ghosts of the past walk […]
“Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South,” Edited by Brian Centrone With Art Design by Jordan Scoggins
May 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Amy Susan Wilson Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South is a much needed anthology of American Southern literature that calls attention to a diverse range of American Southern experiences and issues—primarily contemporary issues and experiences. Edited by Brian Centrone with art design by Jordan Scoggins, these stories and poems by both established […]