Book Reviews

Children of Dust by Marlin Barton Regal House Publishing, 2021 Paperback: $19.95; Special Edition Hardcover: $28.95 Genre: Fiction; Novel Review by Frye Gaillard With his latest book, Children of Dust, Alabama novelist Marlin Barton has taken his place with the finest Southern writers of our times – with the likes of Ron Rash or William Gay – and if anything, that is understating the case. When it comes to understanding the human condition, and its intricate intertwining with the history of [...]

Fugitives of the Heart by William Gay Livingston Press, The University of West Alabama, 2021 E-Book: $19.95; Hardcover: $26.95 Genre: Contemporary Fiction Review by Edward Journey According to William Gay lore, when he first encountered a dictionary, he read it from cover to cover. A reader might reasonably speculate that he spent his writing career trying to use up all of those words. Here’s a horrible example: the protagonist “… screamed a cry of outrage and bereavement and utter revulsion as [...]

This Ditch-Walking Love by James Braziel Livingston Press: The University of West Alabama, 2021 Hardcover: $29.95; Paperback: $19.95 Genre: Contemporary Fiction Review by Edward Journey James Braziel’s This Ditch-Walking Love is an impressionistic collection of short stories and sketches exploring themes of strife and defeat in rural Alabama, near the Locust Fork. The location is described as “not a county of rivers – just rills and rivulets that widen into creeks.” Some stories in the collection are hypnotic collages of time, [...]

Searching for Jimmy Page by Christy Alexander Hallberg Livingston Press: The University of West Alabama, 2021 Paperback: $18.95 Genre: Fiction Review by Frye Gaillard With her new novel, Searching for Jimmy Page, Christy Alexander Hallberg takes her place as one of the bright new stars in Southern fiction. She has given us a coming-of-age story based on a premise that could have fallen anywhere between sad cliché and literary page turner. In Hallberg’s deft and confident hands, it is most assuredly [...]

Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo W.W. Norton, 2021 Hardcover: $25.00 Genre: Nonfiction; Memoir Review by Pam Kingsbury Joy Harjo’s Poet Warrior is a graduate course in what it means to find healing through poetry, as well as to live as a compassionate human. Describing herself as “being equally left and right-brained," Joy Harjo has made her life’s work as a writer and a teacher, as well as a daughter, mother, grandmother, and now matriarch, taking up the ideals of poetic justice, [...]

The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and his People, Lost and Found by Rick Bragg Knopf, 2021 Hardcover: $26.00 Genre: Nonfiction; Memoir Review by Tucker Coombe The opening of Rick Bragg’s new memoir depicts a gorgeous, luxuriant landscape—“tangled pines and mountain pasture, fractured by dappled sunlight…blue jays, yellowhammers, and an emerald blur of hummingbirds”—that provides a stunning, if unlikely, backdrop for the author’s own desolation. The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and his People, Lost and Found opens in the autumn of 2017. [...]

Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay at Goodyear and Beyond By Lilly Ledbetter and Lanier Scott Isom Crown Archetype, 2012 Nonfiction Reviewed by Pam Kingsbury Lilly Ledbetter did not set out to change the workplace; she just wanted to help contribute to her family’s finances, help provide more for her children, and achieve financial stability. Like many Alabamians of her generation, she was born in a small town (Possum Trot, Alabama) and lived in a house without electricity and running water, [...]