Reviews2023-01-25T09:45:22-06:00

Book Reviews

Shooting at Heaven’s Gate

Shooting at Heaven’s Gate By Kaye Park Hinckley Chrism Press, 2022 Paper: $16.24 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Lisa Harrison Shooting at Heaven’s Gate, the latest novel from award-winning author Kaye Park Hinckley, explores questions of moral culpability, divine agency, and the nature of good and evil in a taut, intricately woven tale of vengeance, synchronicity, and redemption. Parallel narratives follow the stories of combative university professors and the residents of a poultry farm nearby. Narcissistic psychology professor Malcom J. Hawkins plots [...]

End Times

End Times By John M. Williams Sartoris Literary Group, Inc., September 2023 Hardcover: $40.00; Paperback: $24.95; eBook: $9.95 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Jon Soko John Williams has certainly kept busy since retiring in 2015 from LaGrange College where he was a noted professor and advocate for a generation of students, writers, and educators. In addition to currently serving as a well-respected mentor and all-around literary guru at Reinhardt University’s Creative Writing MFA program, much of his attention over the past several [...]

Dual: Poems

Dual: PoemsBy Matthew MinicucciAcre Books, 2023Paperback, $17.00Genre: PoetryReviewed by Edward Journey Many ideas are at play in Matthew Minicucci’s Dual, a poetry collection that examines masculinity, aggression, and violence while incorporating the semi-obsolete grammatical conceit of the “dual” – “the not singular and not plural of things.” Dual is the fourth collection of Minicucci’s poetry. The award-winning author, who is widely published in journals, is currently an assistant professor in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama. With [...]

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage By Helen Ellis Doubleday, 2023 Hardcover, $18.79 Genre: Humor Reviewed by Lynn Lamere Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage by Helen Ellis is, put simply, one laugh after another. A chuckle is inevitable while reading her essays in one sitting or enjoying one at a time. Ellis’ musings are a tribute to her husband and their twenty-plus years together, sharing intimacies such as [...]

Handbook of Alabama’s Prehistoric Indians and Artifacts

Handbook of Alabama’s Prehistoric Indians and Artifacts By David M. Johnson, Jr. With contributions by Steven Meredith, Ashley Dumas, and Ben Hoksbergen Borgo Publishing, Tuscaloosa, AL, 2019 (second edition) Paper, $42.95 Genre: Nonfiction Reviewed by Bill Plott One hardly knows how to begin a review when a book has such a comprehensive treatment of its subject. This extraordinary work is not only a handbook for professional and amateur archaeologists, but also a primer, an introduction to Alabama’s rich Native American prehistory [...]

Alabama: Poems

Alabama: Poems By Rodney Jones LSU Press, 2023 Paperback, $18.95 92 pages Reviewed by  Katharine Armbrester Reprinted from Southern Review of Books by permission. In Alabama: Poems, Rodney Jones can render his home state with an insight so sharp that it bites and stings. The collection gathers his poems, prose, and aphorisms, and Jones is dedicated to both lyricism and cold reality: he examines Alabama with a mournful but unflinching eye for detail. Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet whose debut collection, [...]

Shot Through Time

Shot Through Time By Richard Modlin Hartside Publishing, 2023 $24.99, Hardcover; $15.99, Paper Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Danny Gamble In Shot Through Time, Richard Modlin offers a tale that is at once science fiction novel, historical novel, and romance novel. He tells his tale with a deft eye toward detail. Indeed, Modlin breathes life into his primary characters: Sgt. Noland Black, a thirty-year-old grenadier in the 10th British Regiment; Dr. Andrew Gorsky, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Revolutionary War [...]

How to Tell a Story

How to Tell a Story By Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Sarah Austin Jenness, and Kate Tellers Crown Paperback, 2023 Paperback: $18.00 Genre: Storytelling Reviewed by Edward Journey We have stories to tell and the authors of How to Tell a Story are determined that we’ll learn how to tell them right. Listeners of the public radio program The Moth Radio Hour are aware of the high quality of storytelling featured on that show. How to Tell a Story is [...]

Fairhope Anthology: Life, Love and a Little Magic

Fairhope Anthology: Life, Love and a Little Magic By The Fairhope Writers Group Serendipity Press, 2023 Paperback: $16.99 Genre: Short Stories, Poems, Essays Reviewed by Edward Journey Reading Fairhope Anthology: Life, Love and a Little Magic, the newest book from the Fairhope Writers Group, I could imagine reading these stories on a porch (or a Grand Hotel balcony) with a beverage close at hand and a gentle bay breeze blowing. The charming collection celebrates what draws people to the book’s eponymous [...]

Written in the Sky

By Patricia Foster The University of Alabama Press, 2023 Paper, $24.95 Genre: Memoir Reviewed by Ken Autrey Patricia Foster’s most recent memoir, Written in the Sky, builds on two previous books that beautifully document her ongoing efforts to reconcile the constraints of her upbringing in south Alabama with her restless urge to experience and contribute to a broader, more inclusive world. Her title comes from an assertion by James Baldwin about racial injustice in America: “The record is there for all [...]

Magic City: How the Birmingham Jazz Tradition Shaped the Sound of America

By Burgin Mathews The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill; Nov. 2023 Hardcover, $99.00; Paperback, $29.95 Genre: Jazz, Alabama, Birmingham, History, and Criticism Reviewed by Edward Journey In 1993, the Birmingham theatre where I worked hosted a site visit from the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA rep, visiting from Pennsylvania, attended a matinee and rehearsal and interviewed actors and staff. It was my responsibility to show him around the city. While in the Civil Rights District, I had [...]

Roadside Geology of Alabama

By Mark Steltenpohl and Laura Steltenpohl Illustrated by Chelsea M. Feeney Mountain Press Publishing, 2023 Paper, $28 Reviewed by Bill Deutsch Compared with other U.S. States, Alabama’s geology is one of the more convoluted. Its official, color-coded geology map has well over 100 different rock types on the surface, and it gets excruciatingly more complicated going deeper into the strata. Though the layer cake analogy has been used to describe the somewhat chronologically ordered layers of Alabama rock, it’s more like [...]

Threads and Layers

By Sara Garden Armstrong Great Jones Street Press, 2020 Hardback, $45 Genre: Art Reviewed by Ray Wetzel For someone not familiar with contemporary art, the concept can be confusing, even alienating. Artist Sara Garden Armstrong’s work is well within the tradition of contemporary art, but there is an accessibility to the work so that if viewers trust their instincts they will be rewarded with a truly special experience. In Armstrong’s book Threads and Layers, we get to explore a decades-long career [...]

Silent Bob

By Joe Taylor NAT 1 LLC; 2023 Paperback, $9.99 Genre: Fantasy Fiction Reviewed by Edward Journey Okay. So, human actions and thoughts are controlled by viziers, not to be mistaken, necessarily, for Muslim viziers or the “grand vizier.” Viziers are two-hearted, three-eyed invisible beings who cannot eat but can imbibe massive quantities of Maker’s Mark. These viziers live on rooftops and control humanity through pheromones and telepathy, guided by a medieval codebook. They subsist off the “emotions and worries” of their [...]

Bold and Brave

By K. A. Cummins Eleonora Press, 2023 Paper: $16.99 Genre: Juvenile, Picture Book Reviewed by Lisa Harrison Author and illustrator K. A. Cummins pens an engaging story drawn from her own experiences as an autistic person in her second children’s picture book. Elementary school student Lily eagerly anticipates singing a solo during the evening’s choir concert. She is distressed to learn that she must wear the choir uniform rather than her favorite red polka dot shirt. Lily is autistic and wearing [...]

The Unsettled

By Ayana Mathis Alfred A. Knopf, 2023 Hardcover: $29.00 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Edward Journey In The Unsettled, the new novel by Ayana Mathis, both Ava and her mother, Dutchess, are described as “drifters.” The drifting days of Dutchess, a former singer / songwriter who once traveled the club circuit, are long over; she is settled in the disappearing community of Bonaparte, Alabama – “NEGRO INCORPORATED TOWN, ESTABLISHED 1868,” and is trying to save the community and its remaining land from [...]

How to Survive the Apocalypse

By Jacqueline Allen Trimble University of Georgia/New South Books Imprint, 2022 Hardcover: $21.95 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Susie Paul She’s a god / she’s a hero /She survived / all she been through / Confident / damn, she lethal (“Cozy") Beyonce Did I say something way too honest? Made you run and hide (“Forever & Always”) Taylor Swift I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you [...]

The Best of the Shortest: A Southern Writers Reading Reunion

Edited by Suzanne Hudson with Joe Formichella and Mandy Haynes Livingston Press, 2023 Paperback: $19.95 Genre: Short Stories Reviewed by Edward Journey Southern Writers Reading, a “literary slugfest” held on a pre-Thanksgiving November weekend in Fairhope, Alabama, from 1998 to 2008, has become legendary to those of us who heard about it but never attended. Now we have a welcome opportunity to get an abundant taste of what was in the new collection, The Best of the Shortest: A Southern Writers [...]

Versions of May

By Jim Murphy Negative Capability Press, 2023 Paperback: $15 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Foster Dickson It is always nice to see a new release from a poet whose good work is familiar, and the poems in Jim Murphy’s new collection, Versions of May, were a pleasure to read. In addition to a slew of appearances in literary magazines, Murphy’s three previous collections and his involvement in the Montevallo Literary Festival brought him to the attention of many readers and poetry lovers [...]

The Untidy Pilgrim

By Eugene Walter with an introduction by Katherine Clark University of Alabama Press, 2001 Paperback: $24.95 Genre: fiction Reviewed by Don Noble In this review for Alabama Public Radio, Don Noble brings back to our attention an award-winning work by Eugene Walter. We hope his piece introduces new readers to the inimitable Eugene, native of Mobile and citizen of the world, and reminds the rest of us of his joyful presence. Every once in a while, in this space I reread [...]

Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity

By Leah Myers Norton, 2023 Hardback: $25.95 Genre: Memoir, Native American History Reviewed by Edward Journey The quiet, meditative, and occasionally fierce observations of Leah Myers in her memoir, Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity, make for a unique and memorable debut for the author, who currently lives in Alabama. Leah Myers’s great-grandmother, Lillian Cook Kardonsky, was a full-blooded member of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe of Natives on the Olympic Peninsula of what is now Washington State. Based [...]

Flawed Good People: Civil Rights Era Plays from Alabama

By Hubert Grissom Bowker; 2023 Hardback: $23.98; Paperback: $15.98 Genre: Plays and Commentary Reviewed by Edward Journey When I was working in and teaching theatre, a question we would often ask ourselves when dealing with a new script is Why is it a play? It was a practical question. We were considering the reasons this story might be best told visually, on a stage, with an audience watching. Would it be better served as a novel, a short story, an essay, [...]

Basses and Guitars: The Huckabee Collection

By Willie G. Moseley Acclaim Press; 2022 Paperback: $24.95 Reviewed by Doug Simms This book is a relatable look at one guitar and bass enthusiast’s musical journey, with plenty of deep dives into the instruments themselves. The fact that the player/collector is Mike Huckabee, former two-term Arkansas governor, twice presidential candidate, and now TV talk show host, makes for a lot of interesting instrument acquisitions and musical opportunities. If you’re wondering what you might have in common with Mike or his [...]

Arbor’s Reach

By Crystal H. Rogers and Hannah Star Rogers, Photographs by Hiram Harmon Rogers Edited by the late Hugo H. Rogers Amazon; 2021 Paperback: $10.98 Genre: Poetry, Photography Reviewed by Wendy Cleveland Arbor’s Reach is an extraordinary family collection of poems by Crystal H. Rogers and her daughter, Hannah Star Rogers, and photographs by their son/brother, Hiram Harmon Rogers. This book captures ordinary life in and around Auburn, Alabama. The cover photograph “Wisteria” was taken at the height of the spring color [...]

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