The first words that come to mind when I think about Brian Panowich’s debut novel Bull Mountain, are: blown away. Every day for a week after finishing it whenever I thought of it, I shook my head. It’s that good. It’s the story of three generations of the Burroughs family living in north Georgia. For decades they’ve lived outside the law by running moonshine, then marijuana, ... Read More...
The Ash Family by Molly Dektar
Berie is on her way from her hometown of Durham to Richmond to attend college. College that is being paid for by financial aid and the sale of her mother’s heirloom jewelry. Despite this sacrifice, Berie doesn’t feel close to her mother. In fact, she’s sure her mother doesn’t understand and just wants her to go to college because she didn’t. It was her dream, never mine, ... Read More...
Sugar Run by Mesha Maren
Jodi has dealt with feeling unwanted and out of place for most of her life. As a little girl her parents decided she was best off being raised by her grandmother on a remote farm in the Appalachians of West Virginia. Later, as a teen she fell deeply in love with a woman who had a knack for playing poker and dangerous behavior. There’s passion, but the feeling is never quite ... Read More...
Dark Fiction: The Line That Held Us
I hadn’t planned on a week of reviews about dark (or difficult) fiction, but realized that’s where my reading had gone after finishing David Joy’s The Line That Held Us. It’s the story of Darl Moody, who while poaching on a neighbor’s land, shoots and kills another man. The man he kills is the brother of Dwayne Brewer, a behemoth of a man, known for violence and ... Read More...
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
On Monday I mentioned having a book hangover and Delia Owens’s debut, Where the Crawdads Sing, is the culprit. What is worse is that I tried to read my way out of it and got mired in overwrought, pretentious prose that pushed all of Crawdads beauty out of my head and filled it with a tarry gunk that immobilized my brain. A foolish mistake that I’m paying for now. Still, I’ll ... Read More...
An American Marriage: A Novel
Where are you left when you’ve been married for less than two years and your husband is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit? This is the weighty premise of Tayari Jones’s new novel, An American Marriage. Celestial and Roy are a young couple on their way in Atlanta. She is an artist and he is in marketing, they have a nice home and right up until they go to Louisiana to ... Read More...
