Book Reviews

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 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 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 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

By Kelly Kazek Alabama Media Group, 2022 Hardcover, $17.99 Children’s Literature Reviewed by Karen Hilgartner In Kelly Kazek’s wonderfully engaging and beautifully illustrated picture book, The Sun Has Gone to Bed, parents of young children will easily relate to the familiar bedtime struggle. Bedtime approaches and Mama Deer reminds Little Spotted Fawn that “when the sun goes to bed, it’s time for you to go to bed, too.” Little Spotted Fawn’s response: “But I’m not sleepy yet.” Little Spotted Fawn’s character [...]

By Nancy Owen Nelson Kelsay Books; 2022 Paperback: $20.00 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Edward Journey Nancy Owen Nelson’s Five Points South: Poems from an Alabama Pilgrimage is a compact volume of impressionistic poems of memory, longing, love, family, regret, and reckoning. The poems trace the author’s evocative May 2019 journey from the southernmost part of Alabama to its northern reaches. While Nelson grew up as a “military brat,” her family regularly visited Alabama relatives. She lived in Alabama, after her father’s [...]

By James R. Hansen Simon & Schuster; 2023 Hardcover, $28.95 Genre: Nonfiction Reviewed by Don Noble James R. Hansen is professor emeritus of history at Auburn University, now living in Birmingham. He is, by profession, an academic, but his subject matter, over 14 books, has been the most exciting imaginable, including a biography of Neil Armstrong and a book about the Challenger disaster. His new book, Completely Mad, is the day-by-day story of two very different men who, really by chance, [...]

By Julie Buckner Armstrong University of Alabama Press 2023 Paper: $24.95 Genre: Non-fiction Reviewed by Nancy Wilstach If you are, as am I, a transplant to Alabama, you surely have asked yourself about the white contemporaries who witnessed civil rights history in the making and wondered: “What were they thinking?” Specifically, those who were close in age to the African American children who withstood a steady stream of abuse simply to go to school or who lay fearfully in bed at [...]

By Thomas Oliver Ott WordCrafts Press; 2019 Paperback: $18.99 Genre: Historical Fiction Reviewed by Edward Journey Thomas Oliver Ott, in his meticulously researched historical novel, Saturday and the Witch Woman, combines his scholarly knowledge of the 1791 Haitian Slave Rebellion and its leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture; the American slave trade; and his own personal family history to craft a compelling and nuanced narrative focused on a real person, Kwambe Ansong. The name means “born on Saturday, seventh-born child” in Ansong’s native Lucumi [...]