I first encountered zydeco on a visit to New Orleans. I was enthralled by the banging beats of Buckwheat Zydeco. The Cajun music I had heard previously in NOLA was good enough, but I could take it sitting down. Zydeco demanded that I get up and dance. Zydeco combines the energy of rock and roll […]
“Creole Soul: Zydeco Lives” by Burt Feintuch and edited by Jeannie Banks Thomas
November 15, 2022 by Leave a Comment
“Relative Distance” by David Pruitt
November 15, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Faith Eidse A barbaric father forces three sons to travel the long road to normalcy in David Pruitt’s sibling memoir, Relative Distance. The story opens on a moment when all three sons are, separately, homeless. They’ve been rejected by a brutal father and abandoned by a mentally-ill mother. Told in first person, present […]
November Read of the Month: “Milk Blood Heat” by Dantiel W. Muniz
November 3, 2022 by Leave a Comment
In Milk Blood Heat (Grove Press, 2021) Dantiel W. Muniz serves up a savory, delicious stew of short stories in an outstanding debut collection. The stories are set in the steamy cities and suburbs of Florida centered on Black residents and their communities. Female voices and themes predominate. This collection is a rare gem in […]
“Foote: A Mystery Novel” by Tom Bredehoft
November 2, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Meredith Sue Willis Foote: A Mystery Novel (West Virginia University Press, 2022), described as a cryptid murder mystery, shares some qualities with a cozy. But unlike a typical cozy with an amateur sleuth in an English village, the narrator here, Big Jim Foote, is a professional if somewhat desultory private investigator, whose real […]
Books in Brief
November 1, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Summer might be over—at least according to the calendar—but when there remain so many grand books to devour, the end of the season is no reason to stop your so-called summer reading. Here are some top choice books, ranging from the tender literary fiction of “Dear DeeDee” to the edge-of-your-seat thriller, “The Letter Keeper,” and […]
“how small, confronting morning” by Lola Haskins
October 19, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Poet Lola Haskins’s enthusiasm for her adopted state of Florida is expressed with grace, power, and beauty in how small, confronting morning (Jacar Press 2016; released as ebook 2021), a collection of thirty-five poems. The words and images captured in the book quietly yet passionately evoke a wild and natural Florida that is being lost […]