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Booth: A Novel by Karen Joy Fowler

June 21, 2022

booth

I’m not a Civil War buff so have never paid much attention to the time period, but when I saw Karen Joy Fowler had a new novel out, I knew I wanted to read it regardless of subject matter. Which is how I found myself immersed in the serpentine history of one of America’s most infamous families, the Booths. Fowler’s novel is Booth and it is not just about John, but his entire ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Civil War, historical fiction, Southern life

Memphis: A Novel by Tara Stringfellow

April 11, 2022

memphis

Memphis is both the title and location of Tara Stringfellow’s stirring debut novel. Three generations of women pass through the family’s home and tumultuous times in a city where racism and violence flourish. Hazel, August, Miriam, and Joan share lives that spill over with trauma, love, and resilience in this novel about the abiding strength in love and family. It's 1995 and ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, Southern life

Shiner: A Novel by Amy Jo Burns

December 6, 2021

shiner

Stories of contemporary Southern mountain men abound (Bull Mountain, The Line That Held Us), but examples of women are a bit harder to come by. The fact Amy Jo Burns brings three such women to life in her novel, Shiner, is just one outstanding element of many in this lush debut. Raised in isolation in the West Virginia mountains, Wren doesn’t know much of the outside world. ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, literary, Southern life

Razorblade Tears

July 14, 2021

razorblade

Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee Jenkins are middle-aged men with only two things in common. And both are things they’d like to forget: their prison time and their gay sons. One is easier than the other because their sons, Isiah and Derek married and have a little girl. Other than that, Ike is Black and the proud owner of a flourishing landscaping business and Buddy lives in a ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Southern life, suspense, thriller

Betty: A Novel by Tiffany McDaniel

March 29, 2021

Betty

A biracial little girl is the main character and the namesake in Tiffany McDaniel’s shattering novel, Betty. Born in 1954 and raised in Appalachian Ohio, the novel follows her and her five siblings, a Cherokee father, and White mother as their lives are acid-etched with racism from the outside  and tragedy from within. The South of the 1950s and 1960s was not known for its ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: childhood, historical fiction, literary, Southern life

What’s Mine and Yours

March 26, 2021

In Piedmont, North Carolina in the 1990s two women are faced with raising young children on their own. Jade and her son Gee are Black while Lacey May and her three daughters are White. Both are living on the same edge of desperation, but in What’s Mine and Yours each responds to her circumstances in very different ways. Ways that come to clash a decade later, when despite it ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, racism, social issues, Southern life

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