Reviewed by Tamatha Cain This delightful and deceptively deep romance delivers laughs, sighs, and heartfelt cheers as former sweethearts battle the past and the expectations of family to find their way to happily-ever-after. The prose is mouth-watering at times, as are the passages describing swoon-worthy food. When Rita, an Indian-American furniture restorer, signs herself and […]
November Read of the Month: “When Women Danced With Trees—35 Unexpected Stories,” by Marina Brown
November 3, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Versatile, talented Marina Brown once more has written a stunning gem of a book with her collection of short stories in When Women Danced with Trees—35 Unexpected Stories (Gilberte Press 2021). Here, the extraordinary and the unexpected collide with the ordinary and the everyday. With the occasional appearance of magical […]
“Published Prosperity: Gail Godwin’s Writer’s Memoir,” by Kerstin W. Shands
October 28, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Kerstin W. Shands Journals and memoirs are both self-narratives, but they are written from different viewpoints and for different reasons. Gail Godwin’s journals from the 1960s, The Making of a Writer, take us back to a present when no one could know how things would turn out and before Godwin herself could be […]
“Unpublished Prosperity: Gail Godwin’s Journals of Apprenticeship,” by Kerstin W. Shands
October 26, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Essay by Kerstin W. Shands We may think of great writers as fully fledged—born with astonishing powers of perception and creation. Surprisingly, however, research suggests that creativity can be learned and developed, in which case great writers might not be so different from the rest of us after all. Before any kind of breakthrough, they […]
“Bayou Cresting: The Wanting Women of Huet Pointe,” by Jodie Cain Smith
October 20, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Kathleen M. Rodgers When Alabama author Jodie Cain Smith made her debut as a novelist a few years back with her haunting novel, The Woods at Barlow Bend, I knew Smith was an author to watch. Impressed by her ability to gain reader empathy and craft historic fiction that drew me right in, […]