2024 Book of the Year Finalists & Book Lovers Gift Guide

December 11, 2024 by 2 Comments

  Book of the Year to be announced Sunday, December 15.  Which one will win? Any of these titles make fine holiday gifts. (Finalists listed alphabetically by title.) Birdhouse Jesus by Terri Chastain Using a combination of charm and horror and finally transcendence, Chastain creates a protagonist who comes to terms with childhood abuse by […]

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Read of the Month: “Without You Here” by Jody Hobbs Hesler

November 6, 2024 by Leave a Comment

With achingly beautiful prose, Jody Hobbs Hesler explores mental illness and the devastating effects of suicide on family members left behind in her novel Without You Here (Flexible Press: 2024). Complicated family dynamics and a troubled marriage are also important themes that make this story set in the Virginia mountains unforgettable. The timeline shifts frequently […]

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Focus on Mental Health: Donna Meredith Interviews Jody Hobbs Hesler, author of “Without You Here,” and Pat Spears, author of “Hotel Impala”

November 5, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Introduction Recently I had the painful pleasure of reading two exceptionally fine novels that examine the effects of mentally unstable people on their families. In Jody Hesler’s Without You Here, a niece is haunted by her favorite aunt’s suicide, while Pat Spears’s Hotel Impala delivers a devastating portrait of two children confronting the chaos and […]

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