Vanessa Riley offers a stunning picture of Haiti’s history and founding through the eyes of several key women in her novel Sister Mother Warrior (William Morrow 2022). Riley’s superb research and careful crafting of characters bring the story of Haiti’s liberation from foreign rule to life. Riley, the 2023 Georgia Author of the Year for […]
September Read of the Month: “Sister, Mother, Warrior” by Vanessa Riley
September 10, 2023 by Leave a Comment
“Dear Outsiders” by Jenny Sadre-Orafai
September 5, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai (University of Akron Press 2023) is a vibrant tale of two siblings whose often idyllic childhood on the coastline of an unnamed sea changes abruptly. Written in lyrical phrases encapsulated in short prose poems instead of the more traditional paragraphs and chapters, the collection tells the story of the siblings’ […]
“Hillbilly Madonna” by Sara Moore Wagner
September 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
An exquisite, powerful work by a young poet, Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press 2022) by Sara Moore Wagner is an endlessly complex collection of poems to be relished slowly. Each poem demands special attention as the individual verses convey their own unique tales within well-wrought lines of compelling intensity. The poems, mostly written in free verse […]
“The Rat Catcher” by Rebecca Barrett
September 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Ruth Camden is dead in her Alabama attic. Ruth’s distinguished lineage goes all the way back to d’Iberville in old French Mobile. She died apparently with an opened scrapbook in her lap and a cup of tea near her elderly body. Detectives Hugo August and his partner Junior are called to the scene not because […]
Books of Special Note for September
September 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment
NonFiction Tent For Seven: A Camping Adventure Gone South Out West (Sandra Jonas Publishing 2023) by Marty Ohlhaut and Grace Ly manages to be humorous and horrifying and suspenseful all at once. Two brave (or foolhardy) parents take their five children on a tent-camping trip to the Canadian Rockies. The Griswold’s vacation stories are tame […]
“Hard Packed Clay” by Joyce Compton Brown
August 15, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Joyce Compton Brown’s new collection of poetry, Hard-Packed Clay (Red Hawk Press 2022), takes readers on a downhome kind of journey through Southern cultural territory, with poems radiant with a strong sense of place and filled with exquisite, well-wrought language. Brown—a well-respected poet with many accolades—honors both small town life and rural Southerness with poems […]