Review by Christopher Bundrick One of the first things that stands out about Casey Clabough’s Confederado is the fantastic job it does pacing action and generating narrative tension. The prologue is a terrific example of this. Beginning in media res, the book’s first line— Every time the hell-bent little mare took a curve of the […]
“Wait Until Tomorrow,” by Pat MacEnulty
July 25, 2012 by 1 Comment
Review by Donna Meredith In Wait Until Tomorrow, Pat MacEnulty drifts back and forth in time to reveal a full, sometimes troubled, and ultimately rewarding relationship with her mother. Just as Rosalind MacEnulty’s love remains steadfast through Pat’s teenage drug addictions and stint in prison, Pat cares for her mother through years of declining health. […]
July Read of the Month: “Blueberry Years,” by Jim Minnick
July 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Jim Minnick’s The Blueberry Years, re-released in paperback a few weeks ago, proclaims itself, in the subtitle, as being a “memoir of farm and family.” And so it is. Yet, while Minnick is too humble to proclaim it as such, it is the reader’s prerogative to make of a book what it really and truly […]
“Miss Julia to the Rescue,” by Ann Ross
July 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by David Kinzer Miss Julia is the protagonist of a series of popular novels, a Southern widow of considerable wealth, relative age, and the Presbyterian persuasion. She doesn’t solve mysteries so much as become embroiled in the chaotic events of her neighbors’ lives. Her latest adventure is documented in Miss Julia to the Rescue. […]
John Shelton Reed’s Dixie Bohemia
July 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Southern Literary Review is pleased to announce that LSU Press will release John Shelton Reed’s latest book, Dixie Bohemia, this fall. The book addresses the literary scene in and around the French Quarter of New Orleans during the 1920s. Dr. Reed is the author or editor of some 20 books, and he taught at the University of North Carolina […]
“Sinners of Sanction County,” by Charles Dodd White
June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Danilo Thomas Charles Dodd White’s Sinners of Sanction County, set in the heart of Appalachia, is packed full of booze, animals, backwoodsmen and woodswomen, as well of as the blood that can be drawn from each of them in the most violent, if not creative, of means. These tropes have come to be […]