Book Reviews

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 [...]

Table Talk & Second Thoughts: A Memoir By Michael Martone Booth #19, 2024 Paper, Free with subscription to Booth magazine Reviewed by Danny Gamble Q: Does the world really need another literary memoir? A: Only if it comes from the pen of Michael Martone. But what is this text? Is it prose? Is it poetry? Is it prose poetry? Martone defines it as such. So be it. In Table Talk & Second Thoughts, Martone offers a book of memory, memory of [...]

The River Runs South By Audrey Ingram Alcove Press, 2023 Paper: $18.99 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Lisa Harrison A rising star in a prestigious Washington, D.C., law firm confronts a personal tragedy plus familial and professional challenges that lead her to question her priorities, beliefs, and long-held animosity towards her hometown of Fairhope, Alabama, in The River Runs South, an entrancing and illuminating debut novel from Audrey Ingram. Camille Taylor’s seemingly perfect life as wife, mother, and law partner is upended [...]

A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost  By Frye Gaillard University of Georgia (NewSouth Books Imprint), 2023 Hardback: $35.00; Paperback: $29.95 Genre: American History Reviewed by Edward Journey I was seven years old in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. I did not quite understand what was going on, but I was aware of the somber tones of the newscasters, the hushed tones of the grown-ups, and the tension around me. In [...]

AWF is pleased to post Books in Brief, a compendium of titles recently received in the office. Full-length reviews will often be forthcoming, but we hope BIB provides a quick peek at new works in time for your next bookstore or library visit. So many good things to share!

Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices from Alabama's Death Row by Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty Edited by Katie Owens-Murphy Vanderbilt University Press, 2023 Paperback, $24.95; Web PDF, $19.95 Reviewed by Holly Genovese   On January 25, 2024, Kenneth Smith was the first person to be executed via nitrogen hypoxia in the United States. Though his art and writing were not featured in the anthology, Kenny Smith (as he was known to his friends) is mentioned repeatedly in Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices [...]

Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood: Stories By Bradley Sides Montag Press, Feb. 2024 Paper: $14.95; eBook: $2.99 Genre: Short Fiction Reviewed by Edward Journey Something is always falling from the sky in Bradley Sides’s audacious collection of short stories, Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. Stars fall, ashes fall, snow falls, kites fall, robotic body parts fall, while gases sometimes leak into closed spaces. People disappear, or transform, and mythically proportioned monsters become proxies for those who are lost, abandoned [...]

Coming Home: A Roadmap from Fearful to Fully Alive By Layla Palmer Bethany House Publishers, 2023 Trade cloth: $29.99 Genre: Christian Living/Personal Growth Reviewed by Lisa Harrison If your New Year’s resolutions include embracing a cozier lifestyle, you will enjoy Coming Home: A Roadmap from Fearful to Fully Alive by popular decorating and lifestyle blogger Layla Palmer. Part scrapbook, part journal, part commonplace book, Coming Home is a compendium of self-care practices rooted in the author’s Alabama upbringing with its focus [...]

Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author By Jennifer Horne The University of Alabama Press; 2024 Hardcover: $120.00; Paperback and eBook: $34.95 Genre: Biography, History Reviewed by Edward Journey Sara Mayfield (1905-1979), an Alabama writer, journalist, and inventor, grew up in a privileged Southern family, forged a career in writing and reporting, and spent seventeen years in a state mental institution. After being released from the mental hospital, at age sixty, she hit the ground running [...]

Circulation By Ken Autrey Dos Madres Press, 2023 Paperback: $21.00 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Edward Journey In his poem “Mnemonist,” Ken Autrey evokes a man “whose mind / will not forget,” even as the words of the very poem he is writing “now flatten into precision, / holding me in relentless thrall.” That poem seems to be a fitting guidepost for Autrey’s new collection, Circulation, and its poems of memory, loss, and discovery. In a poem like “Expedition,” Autrey’s description of [...]

AWF is pleased to post Books in Brief, a compendium of titles recently received in the office. Full-length reviews will often be forthcoming, but we hope BIB provides a quick peek at new works in time for your next bookstore or library visit. So many good things to share! Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women Who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century By Melissa Estes Blair University of Georgia Press; 2023 In Bringing Home the White [...]

William Wright, Series Editor Taylor Byas, J. Bruce Fuller, and Adam Vines, Volume Editors TRP: The University Press of Sam Houston State University; 2023 Paperback: $29.95 Genre: Poetry Review by Ken Autrey  The recently published tenth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology features poets of Alabama. This ambitious series began back in 2005 when Stephen Gardner and William Wright agreed to embark on a project to edit collections of poetry from each southern state. The initial volume appeared in 2007 and [...]

By Anne WhitehouseDos Madres Press: 2023Paper: $22Reviewed by Nancy Owen NelsonAnne Whitehouse’s collection Steady is difficult to pigeonhole, given the variety of content in the volume. While the poems are largely narrative in method, Whitehouse taps into the lives and minds of historical figures such as Dante (“Dante’s Tombs”) and more recent 20th-century figures such as the poets Auden (“Auden’s Bookcase”) and Mark Strand (“At the Poet’s Last Reading”). However, the most compelling poems in the volume appear in Section III, [...]

By Kim Cross Grand Central Press, 2023 Hardcover: $32.00; Kindle: $16.99; Audio CD: $31.85 Genre: Nonfiction/True Crime Reviewed by Danny Gamble For true-crime literature enthusiasts, Kim Cross has served up a doozy in her latest book, In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child. With an eye toward microscopic detail, Cross engrosses her readers in the sad tale of the Northern California girl who disappeared one fateful night in October 1993. Cross’ story [...]

By Theodore Haddin Madville Publishing; January 16, 2024 Paperback: $18.95; eBook: $8.49 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Edward Journey For the young boy in “First Moves,” the first poem in The Pendulum Moves Off: poems, a new collection by Theodore Haddin, “It’s always a time / coming; he doesn’t yet think of / how it will be passing.” The progression of time in these poems sneaks up on the reader. Time – both human-made and natural – is an essential component of [...]

By Angela Jackson-Brown Harper Muse, 2023 Paper, $17.99 Fiction Reviewed by Cheryl Carpenter In the first chapter of Travels with Charley: In Search of America, John Steinbeck reminds those readers who would follow him and his dog on the journey that they didn’t “invent” sin; sin is old. He goes on to compare a journey to a marriage and notes that “the certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” Awareness of such observations would have done little [...]

By Hardy Jackson Alabama Rural Electric Association, 2023 Paper, $21.95 Reviewed by Bill Plott There was a time when local columnists were fixtures at Alabama’s weekly newspapers. One of the best was Earl Tucker, editor of The Thomasville Times and father of the beloved Katherine Tucker Windham. Skillet Bird filled that slot on The Shelby County Reporter for many years. Shrinking print media, even in local weeklies, has likely taken a toll on that tradition. However, a version of it survived [...]