Part history lesson, part cultural anthropology, and part curiosity about mourning and burial customs of our collective past, Historic Resting Places of Alabama: Cemeteries and Graveyard Around the State by Mollie Smith Waters is a well-researched, documented, and authentic guidebook. Her theory is that cemeteries hold the keys for understanding place, an ideal quality of […]
“Historic Resting Places of Alabama: Cemeteries and Graveyard Around the State” by Mollie Smith Waters
November 9, 2026 by Leave a Comment
Fascinating Faulkner: Personal essay from Mollie Smith Waters
September 25, 2025 by 1 Comment
Storytelling. It is what makes Southerners, well, Southern. While the South has always been able to boast of great yarn spinners, one of the most famous of those writers is William Faulkner. After all, he won a Nobel Prize for Literature, so his genius is not in question. Faulkner was truly brilliant at capturing the […]
“The Salvation of Miss Lucretia,” by Ted Dunagan
July 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Mollie Waters The Salvation of Miss Lucretia is the fourth installment in Ted Dunagan’s series for young adult readers. The books feature two young boys, one white and one black, who are able to overcome the difficulties of the segregated South during the 1940s in order to form a lasting friendship. In their […]
“The Prayer Box,” by Lisa Wingate
March 26, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Mollie Smith Waters Although it is rare to read a book that will change one’s perspective on life, it is not all that uncommon to learn a valuable life lesson from a good read. Such is the case with Lisa Wingate’s The Prayer Box, a solid story with a clear message: do not […]
Mollie Smith Waters Interviews Ted Dunagan
February 28, 2014 by 1 Comment
Ted Dunagan was born in 1943 in Coffeeville, Alabama. He completed the second grade there and then moved to Grove Hill, where he graduated from high school in 1961. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era, after which he attended Georgia State University in Atlanta. Later, he married, began raising a family, […]
“Eden Rise,” by Robert J. Norrell
February 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
An earlier version of this review appeared in The Montgomery Advertiser. Reviewed by Mollie Smith Waters. What would you do if your best friend were killed right in front of you? What would you do if the person who murdered your friend then turned his weapon on you and was attempting to take your life […]