Novel Summary: A baby. It’s the one thing Romie Grodin, orphaned at thirteen, wants more than anything else in the world. A real homeplace. It’s what her coal-mining husband Jasper wants—needs—to provide for his family. When the couple’s best friend—their only “family”—is hurt in a mining accident and his wife becomes addicted to drugs, Romie and Jasper must […]
“Talmadge Farm” by Leo Daughtry
February 28, 2025 by Leave a Comment
In a sweeping story set in eastern North Carolina, Leo Daughtry takes readers from 1957 to 1970, a time of convulsive societal change in Talmadge Farm (Story Merchant 2024). As the Vietnam War intensifies, the civil rights movement spreads across the South, reaching even wealthy bank president and tobacco farmer, Gordon Talmadge. North Carolina’s Research […]
“Rowdy Boundaries” by James L. Robinson
February 28, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Every lawyer has stories to tell—alarming, hilarious, intriguing, or just plain peculiar tales of people and events that require legal intervention in one way or another. James L. Robertson has collected a variety of Mississippi’s most notable accounts of law-breaking characters and balanced them out with a few outlandish but little-known episodes. Robertson is well-positioned […]
BettyJoyce Nash interviews Carla Damron, author of “Justice Be Done”
February 24, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Introduction: A social worker, Carla Damron is also an award-winning fiction writer. Her latest book is Justice Be Done (Bella Rosa Press 2023). Her titles also include The Orchid Tattoo (National Indie Excellence Award) and The Stone Necklace (Women Fiction Writers Award, also chosen as One Community Read for Columbia, S.C.) BettyJoyce Nash writes fiction in Charlottesville, […]
Laura Terry
February 23, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Laura Terry is an Associate Professor of Architecture in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. She also maintains an active art and writing practice. When not teaching or painting, she can be found exploring the woods of the Ozarks.
“The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery” by Di Rushing
February 23, 2025 by 1 Comment
Di Rushing’s The Delta in the Rearview Mirror: The Life and Death of Mississippi’s First Winery (UMiss Press 2024) is described as both memoir and true crime. If one reads the book for memoir alone, the description of the author’s Mississippi upbringing, her travels abroad as a young military wife in Germany, and the return […]