“Remembering Medgar Evers,” by Minrose Gwin

Reviewed by Chris Timmons Medgar Evers should be of interest to anyone who has examined the racial history of the United States, and of the South. It’s too bad he is now near-forgotten. Undoubtedly, general American forgetfulness has much to do with it; as far as history goes, Americans do not have much memory. Nor […]

“The Day is a White Tablet,” by Jill Fletcher Pelaez

Reviewed by Donna Meredith Jill Fletcher Pelaez creates a compelling fictional world steeped in lesser-known details of the last days of the Civil War in her novel The Day is a White Tablet. The story is told through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Tench Traymore, a black youth charged with the task of caring for his […]

“Confederado,” by Casey Clabough

Review by Christopher Bundrick One of the first things that stands out about Casey Clabough’s Confederado is the fantastic job it does pacing action and generating narrative tension. The prologue is a terrific example of this. Beginning in media res, the book’s first line— Every time the hell-bent little mare took a curve of the […]

Allen Mendenhall Interviews Coleman Hutchison

Click here for a review of Apples and Ashes. Click image below to purchase this book. Thank you, Dr. Hutchison, for doing this interview, and congratulations on the publication of this fine book, Apples and Ashes. You address this question at length in your book, but I’ll ask the question anyway for the benefit of […]

May Read of the Month: “Slant of Light,” by Steve Wiegenstein

Review by Cameron Williams The concept of utopia—an ideal community composed of men and women living together in social and political harmony—has been a popular trope in literature since Plato first penned The Republic.  Slant of Light (Blank Slate Press), Steve Wiegenstein’s first novel, breathes new life into this genre, (re)imagining the possibility of utopia […]

“Apples & Ashes,” by Coleman Hutchison

Apples & Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012).  277 pgs. Review by Allen Mendenhall Confederate literature and literary culture have not received the critical consideration that they warrant.  Not only that, but they have been dismissed as scant and mediocre.  Scholars of the South and […]