Reviewed by Donna Meredith Think you know everything there is to know about Scarlett O’Hara? Not so fast! Margaret Donovan Bauer’s newest book will likely have you reexamining the true nature of this American icon. Bauer’s intelligent analysis of five novels with strong female characters in A Study of Scarletts: Scarlett O’Hara and Her Literary […]
April Read of the Month: “Sewing Holes,” by Darlyn Finch Kuhn
April 15, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith Like many Southern novels, Sewing Holes explores a somewhat dysfunctional family facing challenges and loss. Yet Darlyn Finch Kuhn’s refreshing approach to this material results in a novel more heartwarming than tragic, more uplifting than gloomy. Narrator Tupelo Honey Lee is known by her middle name—for obvious reasons. Set in 1975 […]
March Read of the Month: “A Cuban in Mayberry,” by Gustavo Pérez Firmat
March 5, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Miles Smith IV When Gustavo Pérez Firmat told a fellow Cubano he planned to write a work on The Andy Griffith Show, his friend lamented that this was an americanada project, meaning that it was typically Anglo-American and beneath a cultured Cubano scholar. Firmat’s project became more than a simple exploration of mid-twentieth […]
February Read of the Month: “In The Night Orchard: New and Selected Poems,” by R. T. Smith
February 12, 2015 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Brendan Galvin If a reader’s first demand for poetry is that it consist of language other than journalese, then this new and selected volume made up of seventy-three poems taken from eleven previous collections should provide a substantial view of R. T. Smith’s achievement. In Smith’s work there are none of the usual […]
January Read of the Month: “Sweetwater Blues,” by Raymond L. Atkins
January 6, 2015 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Cameron Williams When Palmer Cray is found guilty of vehicular manslaughter, he’s sentenced to fifteen years in Sweetwater State Correctional Facility. On his eighteenth birthday, his first day in the joint, Palmer is issued his “Sweetwater Blues,” the denim shirt and trousers that will be his uniform for the extent of his incarceration. […]
December Read of the Month: “Return to Tradd Street,” by Karen White
December 4, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Lynn Braxton When Charleston Realtor Melanie Middleton inherits an historic house from a benefactor she met only once, Charlestonians wonder what coercion she employed to gain the property, not realizing that Melanie has a pronounced dislike for old houses, branding the crumbling ruins as money pits. To make matters worse, and 55 Tradd […]