Book Reviews

Seven Shades of Evil: Stories from Matthew Corbett’s World  By Robert McCammon  Lividian Publications, 2023  Hardcover: $39.50; Paperback: $24.99; eBook: $11.49  Genre: Historical Fiction; Mystery/Thriller; Short Stories  Reviewed by Edward Journey    Legions of Robert McCammon fans have followed his “Matthew Corbett” historical suspense series for more than two decades. The tenth and final installment, Leviathan, is due out this fall. In the meantime, Seven Shades of Evil: Stories from Matthew Corbett’s World is a collection of eight stories featuring both [...]

D.O.A. at Dante’s  By Robert Collins  11thour Press, 2023  Paper:  $16.00  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Richard Hague  Robert Collins is co-founder of The Birmingham Poetry Review and author of several previous volumes of accomplished and varied poems. His latest collection, D.O.A. at Dante’s, is set in a college-town bar haunted by the lost souls of wasted adjuncts and professors, graduate students, hippies, slumming sorority girls, drop-outs, and various ne-er-do-wells and hangers-on of the kind Dante might have encountered in his Inferno, [...]

The Mistakes That Made Us: Confessions from Twenty Poets  By Irene Latham and Charles Waters  Illustrated by Mercè López  Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group, 2024  Hardcover: $14.24  Genre: Poetry, Picture Books   Reviewed by Barbara Barcellona Smith  In this consequential compilation of mishaps and mistakes, children learn ownership of one’s errors, the value of an apology, and to make amends with others and with themselves. Irene Latham and Charles Waters’ well-rounded selection of award-winning authors works beautifully to create this heartfelt and meaningful [...]

Midnight Cry: A Shooting on Sand Mountain   By Lesa Carnes Shaul   NewSouth Books/University of Georgia Press, October 2024   Hardback: $27.95   Genre: Alabama History, True Crime  Reviewed by Richard Kent Evans   With Midnight Cry, Lesa Carnes Shaul unravels a fascinating moment in Alabama history in the guise of a fast-paced, true-crime thriller. On May 17, 1951, Aubrey Kilpatrick, a farmer and known bootlegger, got into a dispute with sharecroppers living on his property that threatened to turn violent. Marshall County Sheriff [...]

Southern Footprints: Exploring Gulf Coast Archaeology  By Gregory A. Waselkov and Philip J. Carr  The University of Alabama Press  August, 2024  400 Pages, 33 B&W figures, 149 color figures  Hardcover: $120.00; Paperback: $29.95; eBook: $29.95  Genre: Nonfiction, Archaeology  Reviewed by Ian W. Brown    A cornucopia filled with potpourri. Recently, I had the good fortune to visit the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where I got to experience firsthand, in their place of origin, the works of the Old Masters. I have always been amazed [...]

The Unlikely Journey of Leland and Diane  By Edward M. George  Tnsb, 2024  Paperback: $23.95  Genre: Novel  Reviewed by Edward Journey    Literature is full of stories of the ouster of a fading privileged class by a rising working class. On a small and nonconfrontational scale, that is the main throughline of Edward M. George’s first novel, The Unlikely Journey of Leland and Diane, set in the last decade of the twentieth century in small but busy Libertytown in Creek County, [...]

All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights  By Adam Berlin  Livingston Press, 2024  Paperback: $19.95  Genre: Literary Fiction; Short Stories   Reviewed by Danny Gamble    With All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights, Tartt First Fiction Award recipient Adam Berlin’s collection of fifteen short stories introduces readers to well-developed characters subject to the foibles of day-to-day existence. Readers may recognize some of these characters. Others may recognize themselves.    Many of these characters dream of a career in Hollywood. Readers can [...]

The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade  By Hannah Durkin  Amistad, 2024  Paperback: $29.99  Genre: U.S. History; Race & Ethnic Relations  Reviewed by Edward Journey    The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade, by Hannah Durkin, provides sweeping and detailed new scholarship about the African diaspora, focusing on the people kidnapped and transported on the Clotilda. The notorious ship, now lying [...]

Periphylla, and Other Deep Ocean Attractions  By Garrett Ashley  Press 53, 2024  Paperback: $17.95  Genre: Short Fiction  Reviewed by Edward Journey    As I was reading Garrett Ashley’s new collection of short stories, Periphylla, and Other Deep Ocean Attractions, a woman asked what I was reading. I told her I was reading a book to review, and she asked me what it was about. I must have hesitated, and she said, “Well, just tell me about something you’ve read in it.” [...]

Southern Rivers: Restoring America’s Freshwater Biodiversity   By R. Scot Duncan   The University of Alabama Press, March 2024  Hardcover: $120.00; Paperback: $34.95; eBook: $34.95  Genre: Nonfiction, Environmental   Reviewed by Jim Plott     Biologist R. Scot Duncan remains amazed at the diverse aquatic life found in the rivers of Alabama and the Southeast. In fact, he says, the Southeast may harbor richer and more unique aquatic species than any other place on the Earth. Yet, in his latest book, Southern Rivers: Restoring [...]

A Deeper South: The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road   By Pete Candler   University of South Carolina Press, 2024   Paperback: $27.99   Genre: Memoir, Southern History, Travelogue   Reviewed by Edward Journey     In her foreword to Pete Candler’s A Deeper South: The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road, Rosanne Cash writes that she has “learned that to come into the fullness of our own potential, we must know our own history.” Candler begins the book with an [...]

The Heiress  By Rachel Hawkins  St. Martin’s Press, 2023  Fiction, thriller  Reviewed by Lenore Vickrey  I was first introduced to Rachel Hawkins when I read The Wife Upstairs a few years ago. I was intrigued by the fact that the author was an Alabamian, and the book was set in Birmingham, where I grew up. I always like to support the home-grown talent in our state, and I wasn’t disappointed. So, when presented with another Hawkins book, The Heiress, I was [...]

Butterfly Nebula  By Laura Reece Hogan  The Backwaters Press, 2023  Paperback: $17.95  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Jennifer Horne  A glimpse into my internet search history while reading this book gives a good indication of its subject matter: firework jellyfish, vampire squid, question mark butterfly, Be star, camel eye of needle, Elysia sea slug, via negativa, Daphne mythology, tiger shark, Microscopium constellation, Hydra constellation, Crux constellation, Telescopium constellation, Phoenix constellation, Siphonophores, praya dubia, manatee nebula, lyrebird, blue hour. Suffice it to say [...]

Trees of Alabama  By Lisa J. Samuelson  The University of Alabama Press, 2020  Paperback: $34.95; eBook: $34.95  Genre: Nonfiction, Educational  Reviewed by Jim Plott  Auburn University forestry professor Lisa Samuelson might have unintentionally stirred up a controversy with her latest book, Trees of Alabama. Should you use it as a field guide to help identify trees in the woods, or do you keep it at home as a library reference book? Certainly, the cover and pages are thick enough to withstand [...]

Bigger: A Literary Life  By Trudier Harris  Yale University Press, 2024  Paperback  Nonfiction  Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague  After more than eighty years, Richard Wright's Native Son (1940) is still relevant to the life that we live, and in her newest book, renowned scholar Trudier Harris shows readers why. Harris crafts an exceptional biography of Wright's fictional character, Bigger Thomas, who readers typically either hate, pity, or misunderstand. Rarely has he been understood, according to Harris; however, she urges readers to [...]

Through Old Ground  By Randy Cross  Bluewater Publications, 2024  Paperback; $24.95  Genre: Memoir  Reviewed by Lisa Harrison  In the tradition of Lewis Grizzard and Rick Bragg comes community college English professor Randy Cross, whose collection of essays Through Old Ground holds its own with the best. This memoir takes readers down a lane of reminiscences beginning in Cross’s sleepy, small hometown of St. Joseph, Tennessee, and winding through foreign locales of Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon. Along the way, Cross recounts [...]

Accidental Activist: Changing the World One Small Step at a Time  By Mary Allen Jolley  Livingston Press, 2024  Paperback: $19.95  Genre: Memoir  Reviewed by Edward Journey  The long and productive life of service of Mary Allen Jolley (1928-2023) is documented in her memoir Accidental Activist: Changing the World One Small Step at a Time. At a time when vicious and rampant partisan divides threaten our democracy, Jolley recalls a time of reaching “across the aisle” and making positive changes for the [...]

We the People: Confessions of a Caucasian Southerner  By Harry Moore  Broadstone Books, 2024  Paperback: $28.75  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Edward Journey  In our current urgent age of reckoning, poet Harry Moore has written a collection of poems that recall a time that might seem remote to some. Moore evokes the memories of the past that must be reconciled with the present, as these poems – many of them autobiographical – wrestle with a personal legacy that Moore now realizes was [...]

From Every Stormy Wind That Blows  By S. Jonathan Bass  LSU Press, 2024  Cloth: $50.00  Genre: History  Reviewed by Foster Dickson  If you were to ask around among average Alabamians today, many would know that Samford University in Birmingham is a longstanding Baptist institution. But considering that Samford adopted its current name in the mid-1960s, at a time when anyone under sixty had not yet been born, and that its history in Birmingham began when its predecessor college was moved from [...]

Glass Cabin  by Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel  Pulley Press, 2024  Paperback: $18.00  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Foster Dickson  Often, when we pick up a book, it’s easy to assume that the title could just be figurative, some image or turn of phrase meant to shape our thinking as we approach the work. But in the case of Glass Cabin, the title is about as literal as literal can be. This work is a hybrid collection of poetry and prose [...]

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World  Ada Limón, Editor  Milkweed Editions in association with The Library of Congress, 2024  Hard cover: $24.00  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Wendy Cleveland    Ada Limón, the 24th United States Poet Laureate, has established a two-part signature project to bring poetry to the people.  Launched in April of 2024, Poetry in the Parks will continue throughout the year with installments of poetry as public art on picnic tables in seven national parks. Each installation [...]

There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories By Brad Watson W.W. Norton & Company, 2024 Hardcover: $29.99; eBook: $20.99 Genre: Short Stories Reviewed by Edward Journey The astonishing fiction of Brad Watson is available in a new collection, There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories. For readers familiar with Watson’s work, the collection includes eight favorite stories published in two previous short story collections – Last Days of the Dog-Men (1996) and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (2010) – [...]

Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and the Community it Created By Nick Tabor St. Martin’s Press, 2023 Cloth, $29.99 African American History/Alabama Reviewed by Scotty E. Kirkland  Writer and critic Hilton Als tells us that when you read a writer’s work in a popular magazine, you are really seeing two writers. “There’s the person who has something to say, and the person who has to make that something fit.” In 2018, journalist Nick Tabor began working on a New York Magazine [...]

Bound to Dream: An Immigrant Story and The Magic Box: A Book of Opposites  By Charles Ghigna   Schiffer Publishing   Hardback: $18.99 and $14.99  Genre: Children’s  Reviewed by Barbara Barcellona Smith   My great pleasure in reviewing author Charles Ghigna’s two newest books comes from a mutual respect and admiration for our shared cultural histories. Charles’ great-grandfather and my own father both immigrated to America from Italy. Their stories of hardship, grit, and determination contributed to the fabric of our own lives and [...]