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 […]
“Cathead Crazy” by Rhett DeVane
April 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Peggy Kassees Take a small Southern town. Add a mental institute for the criminally insane, one of the most beautiful rivers in Florida, and characters so vibrant they stay in the reader’s heart and mind like longtime friends and family. Then throw in Rhett DeVane’s exquisite sense of humor and finely tuned writing. […]
“Alligator Lake” by Lynne Bryant
April 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Rhett DeVane Lugging painful emotional baggage is difficult enough, but carting that baggage back to a small Mississippi town after ten years takes courage. When twenty-eight-year-old Avery Pritchett returns home to Greendale—“a place where racism reaches as deep and dark as the bottom of Alligator Lake”—for her brother’s wedding, she has more to […]
“Plunder,” by Mary Anna Evans
March 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Philip K. Jason Poisoned Pen Press. 306 pages. $24.95 hardback, $14.95 trade paper. This latest adventure of Ms. Evans’ protagonist, archaeologist Faye Longchamp, has many centers of interest. Faye is at work in the area where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. That is, she is in Louisiana not far from […]
“Diary of a Mad Fat Girl,” by Stephanie McAfee
March 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Patricia O’Sullivan High school art teacher Graciela ‘Ace’ Jones thinks she has a big derriere, but in her hometown of Bugtussle, Mississippi, Ace is better known for her big mouth. In fact, Ace’s rants are famous in Bugtussle – like the time she stood up to a pack of mean girls bullying her […]
“Fielder’s Choice,” by J. Mark Hart
March 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Matthew Simmons Years ago, after reading Richard Russo’s Mohawk, I decided I needed more flexibility in labeling fiction. Obviously, there was pulp, there was genre fiction, and there was the rarified air of “lit-tra-ture.” But what I’d found in Mohawk seemed to somehow occupy parts of all of those labels simultaneously and effortlessly. […]