Book Reviews

A True & Just Record  by Kate Bolton Bonnici Boiler House Press, 2023 Paper: $16.99 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Alina Stefanescu "Every fiction feigns," said literary critic George Steiner, reiterating what Plato found troubling about tragic theater and poetry. Every fiction feigns, and such feigning appeals to our feelings. The poet cannot be trusted, Plato insisted. The tragic drama works the mind into a froth and abandons reason.  Imagination has always been dangerous to dictators. Let's imagine to spite them: imagine [...]

Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging Edited by Jay Lamar and Jennifer Horne With Katie Lamar Jackson and Wendy Reed Photographs by Carolyn Sherer University of Georgia Press, 2024 Hardback: $34.95 Genre: Essay Reviewed by Kerry Madden-Lunsford I left my family in California in 2009 when I accepted a job at UAB teaching creative writing as the freelance life was not conducive to mounting college tuitions for our kids. I spent my first night in Birmingham in a new [...]

By Sharony Green Olympia Publishers, 2023 Bumblebee Paperback Edition: L8.99 UK, $10.84 Amazon Genre: Children’s Fiction Reviewed by Karen Hilgartner Follow Delores Rayshell Ravine as she tags along with her “Aunt Better,” an aspiring actor currently doing “day work” as a housekeeper for a successful young fashion designer, Miss Oona Levine. Author and historian Sharony Green takes the reader on a day in the life of young Delores when her Aunt Betty, who she accidentally named Aunt “Better” when she was [...]

by Rose McLarney Penguin Poets, 2024 Paperback: $20.00 Genre: Poetry Review by Ken Autrey  Poet Rose McLarney’s Colorfast is her fourth full collection, her third published in the prestigious Penguin Poets series. As in her previous work, the poet’s southern Appalachian roots are readily visible here. There are frequent references to family heritage, gardening, the lush natural world, and her home in western North Carolina, with its somewhat exalted title as “the gem mine capital of the world.” But these poems [...]

Double Lives By Mary Monroe Kensington Publishing, 2024 Paper: $27 Genre: Fiction/Historical Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague  Amid themes of murder and betrayal, New York Times best-selling author and Alabama native Mary Monroe weaves together a captivating story about deception and extraordinary familial bonds in her new novel, Double Lives. Set in rural Alabama in the early 1900s through the 1930s, the plot begins against a backdrop of Black Southern life and culture ranging from eating pig ears to drinking moonshine. [...]

The House of Being: Why I Write By Natasha Trethewey Yale University Press, 2024 Hardcover: $18 Genre: Literary Criticism/Memoir Reviewed by Steve Harrison. Natasha Trethewey's new book is a prose meditation on memory, violence, and language. The title comes from her father's reminders that, as Martin Heidegger observed, "Language is the house of being." Trethewey explores the ways in which the boundaries of personal identity and social justice are determined by words: what is said, how it is said, and what [...]

Small Altars By Justin Gardiner Tupelo Press, 2024 Paperback: $21.95 Genre: Lyric Essay, Memoir Reviewed by Edward Journey Beyond the platitudes and self-help books on grief and how to cope with it, there is a significant sub-genre of literary and very personal reckonings with grief. These include works like the novel Someday, Maybe by Onyi Nwabineli, Tess Gallagher’s poetry in Moon Crossing Bridge, and the memoir Passing: A Memoir of Love and Death by Michael Korda. Of course, Joan Didion’s The [...]

Grandma Annie’s Poetry By Ramona L. Hyman Illustrated by Art Dan 105 Publishing, 2022 Paperback: $12.99 Amazon Reviewed by Karen Hilgartner “Poetry is a little like faith. You can’t understand it all the time, but you sure can feel it,” says Grandma Annie. Young readers will move to the rhythm and flow of poetry in author Ramona L. Hyman’s, Grandma Annie’s Poetry, as Blessing, accompanied by her twin brother Billy, describes how her Grandma Annie’s poetry makes them feel. She says [...]

Fireball (play) By Norman McMillan Premiered March 8, 2024, at Montevallo Main Street Players; Montevallo, Alabama Directed by Gregory Wayne Martin Starring Ingrid McGraw Based on the book Fireball By Hazel Lindsey and Julia McMillan Walker GreyWalk Books, 2015 Paperback: $15.00 Genre: Memoir Anyone who has had the opportunity to spend time with Norman McMillan knows that he is an engaging and skillful storyteller. McMillan, a long-time professor, department chair, and current Professor Emeritus at the University of Montevallo, has won [...]

Muscadine By A. H. Jerriod Avant Four Way Books, 2023 Paper, $17.95 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Daniel DeVaughn  This review originally appeared in American Literary Review (Fall 2023). The muscadine is an unusual fruit. Native to the Southeastern United States, it was the first grape to be cultivated in North America. Its natural range extends from Florida north to Delaware, and it can be found growing in the wild from Georgia to eastern Texas. Sir Walter Raleigh mentions it in an [...]

The Forest That Fire Made: An Introduction to the Longleaf Pine Forest By John McGuire, Carol Denhof, and Byron Levan; foreword by Rhett Johnson University of Georgia Press, 2023 Paper: $34.95 Reviewed by Cindy Ragland We often disregard the value of an introduction, until we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory.  For decades most of the publications on longleaf pine and its ecosystem have been peer-to-peer, with the notable exception of Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. As a long-time practitioner [...]

Lost Literacies: Experiments in the Nineteenth-Century US Comic Strips  By Alex Berringer  The Ohio State University Press, 2024 Paper, $36.95 Genre: Nonfiction Reviewed by Bill Plott When The Birmingham News announced its impending abandonment of print editions, two concerns expressed most by readers were the loss of obituaries and the loss of comic strips. Fortunately, there are internet presences such as GoComics.com and ComicsKingdom.com that provide fans with unlimited access to the latter at reasonable costs. That scenario hints at the importance [...]

Lights, Camera, Bones By Carolyn Haines Minotaur Books, 2024 Hardcover with dust jacket: $28.00  Genre: Fiction/Mystery & Detective/Cozy Reviewed by Lisa Harrison Bestselling author Carolyn Haines, perennial favorite of cozy-paranormal mystery readers, conjures up another delightful whodunit in Lights, Camera, Bones, a Sarah Booth Delaney mystery.  Prospects appear bright for the riverside town of Greenville, Mississippi, when a movie production company arrives to film an epic about the 1927 flood that submerged a large section of the area. The crew’s presence [...]

The Vanishing Woman By Kelly Dean Jolley Meryton Press, 2023 Paper, $9.99 Genre: Mystery Reviewed by Lisa Harrison In his novel The Vanishing Woman, Kelly Dean Jolley joins the seemingly-impossible-occurrence mystery genre by posing the question of where a woman who disappears from the locked cabin on a moving train might be. If she is on the train, is she hiding, or is she being hidden? Is foul play involved, and if so, who might be the culprit? Protagonist Tad Fowler [...]

The Marshmallow Show Is Cancelled By Debby Regan Outcast Press, 2023 Paper, $12.99 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Danny Gamble What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—unless it happens in the satirical romp through pop culture, The Marshmallow Show Is Cancelled. Debby Regan has conjured up a zany desert town inhabited by Marshmallow, a benign bunny puppet with its own kids TV show; Findley Luker, Marshmallow’s puppeteer after his father Kevin dies and a fledgling actor turned international movie star; Andrea Rizzo, [...]

Searching for Home Waters: A Brook Trout Pilgrimage By Michael K. Steinberg University of Georgia Press, 2023 Hardcover: $39.95 Genre: Travel Memoir, Ecology and Environment, Trout Fishing Reviewed by Edward Journey the cover of Searching for Home Waters features two trout, facing opposite directions “Poetics of place” is a phrase used by Michael K. Steinberg in his captivating book, Searching for Home Waters: A Brook Trout Pilgrimage. The phrase references a morning spent on Vermont’s Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, [...]

Entwined  By Carolyn DeMeritt and Pinky/MM Bass Hardback; $59 Genre: Art/Photography Reviewed by Ray Wetzel While Entwined is a book for lovers of contemporary art, it is more than decoration for your coffee table. The collection of images, taken by photographer Carolyn DeMeritt of model and collaborator Pinky Bass, does much more than offer lip service and platitudes to try to sell you on a specific thought about a work. This book is a true work of art, At first glance, [...]

Tell It True By Tim Lockette  Seven Stories Press, 2021 Paper: $18.95 Genre: Young Adult Reviewed by Judy Sheppard In this fast-moving, powerful novel about journalism, highly respected reporter Tim Lockette flawlessly channels a whip-smart, smart-mouthed 15-year-old Lisa Rives as she morphs from jester to reporter, from editor of a high school newspaper to witness to an execution. Tell It True is an apt title, calling up Emily Dickinson's plea to "tell all the truth, but tell it slant," and journalism's [...]

Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History By Howell Raines  Crown/Penguin Random House, 2023 Hardcover, $36  Genre: History/Family History Reviewed by Richard Kent Evans The idea to write Silent Cavalry first occurred to Howell Raines when he was a boy in the 1950s. His grandmother, Martha Jane Best Raines, was relaying to her grandson tales of the “hillbilly rivalries” that occupied the closing decades of the nineteenth century. To Howell’s surprise, [...]

Confessions of an Ignorant Traveler: A Nomad’s Journey By Bob Corley I.B. Dog Publishing, 2022 Paperback: $9.25 Genre: Travel Memoir Reviewed by Edward Journey Bob Corley’s entertaining memoir, Confessions of an Ignorant Traveler: A Nomad’s Journey, might also be subtitled “Been There, Missed That.” Inspired by a journal the author kept during a free-wheeling backpacking trip to Europe and Israel in 1971-72 as a newly discharged army veteran, the early pages of the book detail all that Corley missed by not [...]

Collected Poems By Joseph Harrison Waywiser Press; 2024 Paper Reviewed by Steve Harrison (no relation) Poetry in the 21st century is very much alive, and here is a volume to prove it. Joseph Harrison’s Collected Poems, which will be generally available in April 2024, gathers poems from four of the poet’s previously published volumes: Someone Else’s Name (2003), Identity Theft (2008), Shakespeare’s Horse (2015), and Sometimes I Dream That I Am Not Walt Whitman (2020). Throughout the collection, Harrison delights in [...]

Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street By Victor Luckerson Random House; 2023 Hardcover: $30 Genre: Nonfiction Reviewed by Nancy Wilstach This doorstop book is really worth tackling, guaranteed to answer questions you were not even sure you had but about which you suddenly find yourself bursting with curiosity. Luckerson tackles the heart-rending story of America’s “Black Wall Street”—from its gritty origins to its heyday of glitz, glamor, and gold through its mindless [...]

Irene Teel – Psychologist, Social Worker, Fortune Teller, Witch  By Linda Rochester  48 HrBooks, 2022 Paperback: $15 Genre: Nonfiction  Reviewed by Jim Plott  For a time in the 1900s, a steady stream of vehicles, many with out-of-county and out-of-state automobile license plates, converged almost daily on the small Clay County community of Millerville. Their destination? Rena Teel.  Irene Vansandt Teel or “Miss Rena” spanned six decades with her “visionary” abilities helping people find lost children, livestock, and hunting dogs. She casually [...]

With the Devil’s Help: A True Story of Poverty, Mental Illness, and Murder By Neal Wooten Pegasus, 2022 Hardcover: $26.95 Genre: Memoir Reviewed by Cheryl Carpenter Sand Mountain, at the southern end of the inscrutable Appalachian region, is commonly associated with shape-note singers, snake handlers, and unrelenting poverty. Those who have made a home in the towns and coves of those mountains have had limited employment opportunities: coal mining, subsistence farming, working in textile mills. They are some of the ones [...]