Reviewed by Philip K. Jason Set in rural Madison County, North Carolina in the mid-1980s, this quietly gorgeous novel is most remarkable for its exquisitely rendered sense of place. Mr. Cash not only gives us every kind of sensory news about the community in which he locates his story, but he also paints the […]
January Read of the Month: “A Land More Kind Than Home,” by Wiley Cash
January 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
December Read of the Month: “Wings of Glass,” by Gina Holmes
December 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Mollie Waters Penny Taylor has had it rough. Growing up on a small farm under her daddy’s watchful eyes has never given her much opportunity to interact with people her own age, especially boys. In the summer of 1999, all of that changes when a bumper crop requires her father to hire additional […]
November Read of the Month: “A Short Time to Stay Here,” by Terry Roberts
November 7, 2012 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Matthew Simmons It is difficult to give Terry Roberts’s debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, the full and proper treatment it deserves. This is not because it is a novel marked by “difficulty” of some experimental sense; to the contrary, it is a highly-readable, easily-digestible book. But in that statement lies […]
October Read of the Month: Dixie Bohemia, by John Shelton Reed
October 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Allen Mendenhall John Shelton Reed’s Dixie Bohemia is difficult to classify. It’s easier to say what it isn’t than to say what it is. It isn’t biography. It isn’t documentary. It isn’t quite history, although it does organize and present information about a distinct class of past individuals interacting and sometimes living together […]
September Read of the Month: “Keowee Valley,” by Katherine Scott Crawford
September 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Philip K. Jason An independent woman; a lush frontier environment; the approach of war; and a romance of opposites are only some of the ingredients in Ms. Crawford’s ambitious first novel. Combining a style that is frequently lyrical, abundant historical research that has been well-absorbed and woven into the fiction with authority, and […]
August Read of the Month: The Oxford American’s Best of the South 2012 Issue
August 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The Read of the Month for August is the latest issue of The Oxford American. The issue, subtitled Best of the South 2012, features fiction by Wendell Berry, Tyrone Jaeger, and Addie Citchens; introduces new OA columnist Jesmyn Ward; and offers eclectic essays and commentary on such topics as food, Hilton Head, religion, music, kinship, […]