Neal Wooten’s powerful memoir, With the Devil’s Help (Simon & Schuster 2022), begins with a knock-knock—and it isn’t a joke. The men in black suits have shown up at four-year-old Neal’s door and want to speak to his father. This is Neal’s introduction—and ours—to a family mystery: who are these men? Why are they threatening […]
“Yellow Wife” by Sadeqa Johnson
June 18, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Yellow Wife (Simon & Schuster, 2021) by Sadeqa Johnson has garnered much recognition already: A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and Christian Science Monitor, and a Goodreads Choice Award. Yet Southern Literary Review didn’t want to let this extraordinary historical novel escape our readers’ notice, so Donna Meredith and Claire Matturro discussed the novel’s merits […]
“Love Letters from an Arsonist” by David van den Berg
June 13, 2023 by 1 Comment
In his compelling, imaginative collection of poetry, Love Letters from an Arsonist (2023), David van den Berg treads through a grand old Southern literary campground of gothic, beauty and brutalism, religiosity, and nature—all in the same works. These are intense poems that cry out to be read and reread and absorbed, verses that will not […]
“The Beautiful Misfits” by Susan Reinhardt
June 12, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The Beautiful Misfits is a fascinating look into three distinct industries: television journalism, luxury cosmetics sales, and addiction rehabilitation. In each world, we learn that everyone is pushing something, whether information with an agenda, unrealistic standards of perfection, drugs and alcohol, or freedom from the same. Reinhardt’s protagonist, Josette “Josie” Nickels, ruminates on the opioid […]
“Hemlock Hollow” by Culley Holderfield
May 31, 2023 by Leave a Comment
InHemlock Hollow, Culley Holderfield takes readers on a fascinating two-fold journey as he skillfully interweaves the lives of twenty-first-century Caroline McAlister and nineteenth-century Carson Quinn. The story begins with Caroline, a professor of astroarchaeology, finding Carson’s journal in the cabin she is having restored. Her return to this Hemlock Hollow cabin after many years is […]
Read of the Month: “Red Clay Suzie” by Jeffrey Dale Lofton
May 30, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Named as one of the most anticipated LGBTQIA+ books of 2022 by Lambda Lambda Literary and winner of the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction, Red Clay Suzie (Post Hill Press) was absolutely captivating. Calling it a page-turner does not do it justice, though its short chapters, sometimes only a few pages in length, make […]