Simply marvelous book. I absolutely could not put it down once I started it. Every time I had to break from it: to sleep, to bathe, to go out to lunch with my mother and kids….it was agony. It is a lengthy book but even with these (necessary?) interruptions I managed to complete it in about 30 h...
"She writes lyric, luminous prose; her craft is so strong it becomes transparent, and, like the best of storytellers, she knows how to get out of the way so that the story can tell itself." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Moses Bailey, a preacher's son, forbade his fiddle-loving wife Kate Malone to play....
This was quite a surprisingly good read. It is my bookclub’s December read and I really enjoyed it. It is actually several letters written by 3 generations of women in the same southern family. These are the familiar X-mas letters that people like to send with their X-mas cards that tell frien...
Haunting, unforgettable, tragic. It's an epistolary novel comprised of Molly Petree's diary, and excerpts from other characters' diaries and letters, as well as newspaper clippings, songs, and court records.When the book opens, 13-year-old Molly Petree is living on a plantation named Agate Hill ...
Crystal Spangler lives in rural Appalachia. She's the apple of her mother's eye -- not yet beautiful, but she will be. She's the most popular girl at Black Rock High. She makes cheerleader, gets good grades, and is elected beauty queen. Crystal discovers God, goes to college, and falls in love. W...
Pleasant as a cloudless summer day, the stories in this book are sweet, charming, and funny. Quite a few of them deal with women getting on with their lives after their menfolk have hightailed it for greener, younger pastures. "Intensive Care" was the most powerful story. A man reminisces as he w...
Lee Smith. The name for me evokes memories of long days spent happily lost in books that speak to the minds and hearts of mountain girls everywhere. Oral History, Family Linen, Black Mountain Breakdown, The Devil's Dream, Saving Grace, and my particular favorite, Fair and Tender Ladies. I know so...
When Jennifer, a college student, returns to her childhood home of Hoot Owl Holler with a tape recorder, the tales of murder and suicide, incest and blood ties, bring to life a vibrant story of a doomed family that still refuses to give up....
"Brilliant, haunting, dark, joyous, remarkably compelling...immensely difficult to put down...a master storyteller."THE VILLAGE VOICE A childhood memory re-experienced, a funeral that brings about a family reunion, and the excavation of a swimming pool on the site of an old well, uncover family ...
A teenage girl tells the painful and hilarious tale of her philandering father's fall from grace and curious effort to save his marriage. A professional "fiancee" chronicles her Caribbean cruise with three Atlanta developers. A young woman concocts an imaginary brother to impress her friends -- o...
Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger The Southern CrossMama always said, “Talk real sweet and you can have whatever you want.” This is true, though it does not hurt to have a nice bust either. Since I was blessed early on in both the voice and bosom departments, I got the hell out of eastern Kentucky...
I WAS BORN IN A RUGGED RING of mountains in southwest Virginia—mountains so high, so straight up and down, that the sun didn’t even hit our yard until about eleven o’clock. My uncle Bob Venable—they lived across the road—used to predict the weather by sticking his head out the window and hollerin...
It had been one of the seats of Sunni authority since Saladin, and Napoleon’s 1798 invasion touched off tremors resonating throughout the Muslim world. Political and religious leaders were forced to confront the fact that, in military terms at least, their world was no match for the foreigners. T...
She and Richard Overholser fell into long literary conversations whenever we went over to their house for dinner. I especially remember one Saturday night when I was helping Claudia clear the dishes while he and Dixie discussed existentialism, “a philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isol...