Book Reviews

By Susan Cushman, editor MadVille Publishing, 2023 Paper: $19.95 Genre: Inspirational Reviewed by Cheryl Carpenter Contrary to assurances given to frightened children that “there’s no such thing as ghosts,” the poems, essays, short stories, and art of Susan Cushman’s All Night, All Day: Angels, Life and Death maintain that there are, indeed, ghosts and angels among us all the time. Twenty-five distinguished women – several with Alabama connections – have contributed to this intriguing collection with the common theme that people [...]

By Kelly Kazek with illustrations by Joshua J. Hamilton Alabama Media Group, 2022 Hardback: $19.99 Genre: Humor Reviewed by Abby McGinn Kelly Kazek is an award-winning journalist and humor columnist. She is the author of 19 books, which include picture books, chronicles of motherhood, and tales from her days as a reporter. She is especially known for writing about Southern culture, and her work currently appears on It’s a Southern Thing and her blog, KellyKazek.com. Her numerous accolades include two Alabama [...]

by Rachel Hawkins St. Martin’s Press, 2022 Cloth: $28.99 Genre: Murder mystery Reviewed by Cheryl Carpenter With the simple declaration “Houses remember,” Rachel Hawkins sets the mood for her latest novel, The Villa. Although the book jacket alludes to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as one possible influence, I couldn’t help drawing a comparison to Poe’s “House of Usher” or, more particularly, to several Henry James novels in which houses are personified. No Turn of the Screw apparitions are on display in The [...]

By Rebecca Browder Home House Press; 2023 Paperback: $14.95 Genre: Short Stories Reviewed by Edward Journey If you’re a child and want to know the details, you must eavesdrop on your parents or the neighborhood ladies gossiping over glasses of iced tea. At least that’s how the reader learns some of the more salacious details in Rebecca Browder’s short story collection, Sorry Men in Southern Literature. These are brave, often sorrowful, slice-of-life stories that are as likely to end on a [...]

By Charles Ghigna Schiffer Kids, 2023 Hardcover: $24.99 Genre: Children’s Poetry Reviewed by Kelly Kazek I was lucky enough to spend my childhood emersed in rhyme. Both from my maternal grandmother, a writer of children’s poetry, and from the likes of Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss. Being able to paint with rhymes is a superpower, one I’m certain is aided by mystical forces, and that is why Charles Ghigna needs a cape. Ghigna, known as Father Goose because he has authored [...]

By Patti Callahan Henry Atria Books, An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2023 Hardcover, $28.99 Reviewed by Linda Henry Dean It is hard to imagine a situation in which a loving parent would pack a knapsack for his/her child, hang a luggage tag around the child’s neck (along with a gas mask and a self-addressed postcard to be sent when the child found a home), and put the child on a train bound for an unknown destination with strangers who [...]

By Kent Quaney University of Wisconsin Press, 2022 Paper: $18 Genre: FictionReviewed by Michel Aaij Kent Quaney comes to us by way of Utah, Australia, and Southern Miss; he now directs the Creative Writing program at Auburn University, Montgomery. One Breath from Drowning is his first novel: it’s a fun read, light in tone but serious in content, and the promise of things to come. The novel recounts the adventures, personal growth, and redemption of Ryan and Sam, two young men [...]

by Adam Vines Louisiana State University Press, 2022 Paperback: $17.95 Genre: Poetry Review by Ken Autrey In his third book, Adam Vines, who teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has fashioned a collection making skilled use of traditional forms, such as the sonnet, triolet, and pantoum, but also nonce forms following various meters and rhyme schemes. Those structural elements mark a distinct change from his previous volume, Out of Speech, a series of ekphrastic poems that [...]

By Lee Smith Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill; 2023 Hardcover: $27.00 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Edward Journey Writer Lee Smith’s generosity to aspiring young writers, as well as to her veteran colleagues, is well-documented. She is widely regarded for her encouragement and support. Those traits extend to the characters she creates for the stories she tells – short stories, memoirs, and fifteen novels at last count. Smith’s new novel, Silver Alert, is another sterling example of that generosity of spirit that [...]

By Daniel Wallace With Illustrations by William Neely Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2023 $28, Hardcover; $14.99, Kindle Reviewed by Danny Gamble The very early 1970s, Homewood, Alabama, harbored few “hippies.” Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and five other novels, introduces two—his sister Holly and her life-long companion, William Neely. Make that three if you count Daniel, and you should. This is his story after all.  His new memoir This Isn’t Going To End Well: The True Story of a [...]

By Ann Bedsole Hardback: $26 Paperback: $14.50 Reviewed by Don Noble Like many of us, Ann Bedsole felt it wise to stay close to home during the COVID pandemic. Rather than just killing time while avoiding dying, she decided to use the enforced seclusion to write her autobiography, and the result is more revealing and candid and amusing than one would expect from a very well-known public figure. Born in Selma, in 1930, but raised mostly in Jackson, Alabama, Bedsole had [...]

By Jefferson Cowie Basic Books, 2022 Cloth: $35.00 Genre: History Reviewed by Foster Dickson In his book’s section about the Civil War, historian Jefferson Cowie apprises the reader that neither Eufaula specifically, nor Barbour County more generally were significant locations in the fighting. So, in the scope of Southern history, many may not know about this place. However, the rest of the four-hundred-plus pages in his 2022 book Freedom’s Dominion make sure that we understand how significant this place is, to [...]

By Bobby Mathews Shotgun Honey Books; 2023 Paperback: $15.95 Genre: Contemporary Noir Reviewed by Edward Journey Crime writer Bobby Mathews knows Birmingham from back alley to bougie. His new book, Magic City Blues, explores the city in all its variety, serving at times as a travelogue as well as a hard-boiled whodunnit. Mathews’s self-proclaimed “checkered past” includes award-winning journalism and short crime fiction; his crime novel about professional wrestling, Living the Gimmick, was published in 2022. Magic City Blues is raucous [...]

By Nana Nkweti Graywolf Press, 2021 Paperback, $10.99 Genre: Short Fiction Reviewed by Don Noble Unless by some chance you are familiar with the intricacies and difficulties of Cameroonian culture in America, you have never read anything like these stories by Nana Nkweti. They are ten stories—all fully developed. No short-shorts here. The shortest ones are eight and twelve pages; most are 20 or more and fully satisfying. Nkweti writes of the stresses in the community—between African-Americans and Africans, those who [...]

By Rick CarterPrairie Eden Music, 2021$25, Paper; $9.99, KendleReviewed by Danny GambleAnyone who has spent any time in the Wooden Nickel in Birmingham, The War Eagle Supper Club in Auburn, the Flora-Bama on the Gulf Coast, or any one of numerous music festivals and beer joints throughout the Southeast and beyond knows the name Rick Carter, or if not, they certainly know his music. Whether performing with Telluride, Rollin’ in the Hay, or Franky Velvet and the Mighty Veltones, Carter and [...]

By Terry BarkleyBlue Rooster Press; 2022Paperback: $19.95Genre: Civil War HistoryReviewed by Edward JourneyWriter Terry Barkley fires the opening volley in his compact military history, Twilight of the Confederacy: The Alabama Corps of Cadets and the Burning of the University of Alabama, charging that the University of Alabama “is playing down or hiding its Confederate heritage.” He argues that, contrary to contemporary trends, the University of Alabama’s Civil War story is one “that needs to be told.”After airing his concerns in the [...]

By William G. DeutschMindbridge Press, 2022Hardcover: $32Genre: NonfictionReviewed by Jim BufordPreorder here Dr. Bill Deutsch, a retired researcher and educator at Auburn University, has followed up his acclaimed first book, Alabama Rivers, with a new book entitled Ancient Life in Alabama: The Fossils, the Finders & Why It Matters.Alabama has fossil-bearing rocks from the Cambrian Period to the more recent past when the world we know now was beginning to emerge, a timeframe spanning approximately 500 million years, i.e., “deep time.” Note [...]

By Jerry Brown, edited and with an introduction by Joey BracknerThe University of Alabama Press; 2022Paperback: $22.95Genre: Folk Art / Alabama / BiographyReviewed by Edward JourneyAnyone who had the opportunity to hear traditional pottery artist Jerry Brown hold forth at the Kentuck Arts and Crafts Festival, or other regional and national arts and crafts events (including the Jerry Brown Arts festival in Hamilton, Alabama), knows that nobody could tell Jerry Brown’s compelling story as well as Jerry Brown himself. Brown left [...]

By Laura SecordLivingston Press, 2022Paperback, $18,95Genre: PoetryReviewed by Lisa Hase-JacksonAn Art, a Craft, a Mystery by Birmingham Poet Laureate Laura Secord, aka Mojo Mama, is an immersive narrative chronicling the lives of Secord’s ancestors Lydea and Kate Gilbert between the years 1636 and 1669. Told in tandem from each woman’s point of view, poems in this debut collection describe with historic accuracy an epic and engrossing story of hardships from America’s early beginnings.The first poem in the collection, a sonnet, captures [...]

By Michael MartoneBaobab Press, 2022Paperback, $ 16.95Genre: Short FictionReviewed by Don NobleIn 1919 Sherwood Anderson published his collection of loosely connected stories Winesburg, Ohio and it became, almost instantly, an American classic. Anderson wrote 22 short stories, each about a citizen of his fictional Winesburg. At that time the small town was held in nearly religious awe. There were front yards with big oak trees, and a swing and a freckle-faced lad: an Eden.Not so, said Anderson. In Winesburg, the characters [...]

By Kate Bolton Bonnici The Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University, 2020 Paperback: $16.95 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Bee Baldwin In her deeply moving and award-winning book of poetry, Night Burial, Alabama native Kate Bolton Bonnici depicts a daughter’s loss of her mother to cancer and offers an intimate shared experience of the grieving journey. Within the pages of Night Burial, interwoven are the themes of motherhood, daughterhood, and the complexities and suffering of the female body. Through her [...]

By Lauren Goodwin Slaughter Panhandler Books Paperback, $15.95 Genre – Poetry Reviewed by: H. M. Cotton The word spectacle summons to mind the timeless directive from our elders, “don’t make a spectacle of yourself.” The word carries a lot of weight and is both a striking and fitting title for Lauren Goodwin Slaughter’s newest poetry collection. Right away, Slaughter welcomes us to Spectacle with a visit to the Chicago Botanic Gardens where the notable Alice the Corpse Flower (featured on the [...]

By Mark Johnson Down and Out Books, 2022 Paper: $18.95 Reviewed by Don Noble After 23 years as an executive with the United Way, Mark Johnson got sick of it all—the meetings, fundraisers—and lost faith in whether it was all doing much good or making a difference. He took the bold step of quitting that job and becoming a police officer in Mobile. His six years in patrol and six as a detective, in some of the worst neighborhoods, were filled [...]

By Whit Gibbons The University of Alabama Press; 2023 Paperback: $22.95; eBook: $22.95 Genre: Natural History / Outdoor Recreation Reviewed by Edward Journey In the prologue to his recent book, Salleyland: Wildlife Adventures in Swamps, Sandhills, and Forests, naturalist Whit Gibbons states, “This book does not come close to being a memoir, nor is it intended to be.” That prefatory statement might serve as a warning to any reader not fully invested in the rigorous amateur surveys of our natural environments [...]