It’s easy to see why Ellen Birkett Morris’s enchanting debut novel, Beware the Tall Grass (Columbus State University 2024), won The Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence. The novel expertly entwines two moving tales, that of Eve Sloan, a mother trying desperately to understand and protect her son Charlie circa 2010; and that of […]
“A Happier Life” by Kristy Woodson Harvey
November 4, 2024 by Leave a Comment
This is Kristy Woodson Harvey’s eleventh novel. An avid follower of hers, I love this book. I love it the best of all of her books so far; of course I may have said that once or twice before when her previous new ones came out. A Happier Life (Gallery Books 2024) is the story […]
“The Homeschool Experiment,” by Charity Hawkins
May 2, 2012 by 1 Comment
Charity Hawkins, 2012, Familyman Ministries, 229 pp, $12.99, 978-1937639068 Review by Patricia O’Sullivan. Julianne Miller, the protagonist of The Homeschool Experiment, a novel, homeschooled her three children last year with mixed results. This year she is determined to do better. With a little organization, lots of patience, and a network of supportive friends, Julianne learns how […]
“Ghosting” by Kirby Gann
April 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Tina Egnoski In Kirby Gann’s new book, Ghosting, Kentucky is raw-edged, poverty-stricken and violent. It is also a place of physical beauty and, for some, of personal redemption. The protagonist James Cole Prather, known as Cole, is twenty-three and at loose ends. He lives with his mother Lyda, an addict. His half-brother Fleece […]
“Fielder’s Choice,” by J. Mark Hart
March 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Matthew Simmons Years ago, after reading Richard Russo’s Mohawk, I decided I needed more flexibility in labeling fiction. Obviously, there was pulp, there was genre fiction, and there was the rarified air of “lit-tra-ture.” But what I’d found in Mohawk seemed to somehow occupy parts of all of those labels simultaneously and effortlessly. […]
February Read of the Month: “In the Time of the Feast of Flowers,” by Tina Egnoski
February 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Bonnie Armstrong Tina Egnoski won the 2008 Black River Chapbook Contest with a collection of short stories, Perishables. Reviews of that work mention that she is a fine storyteller of the human condition whose fast-paced and dynamic prose generate an emotional intensity coupled with appropriate restraint. Egnoski continues this excellent writing with the publication of […]