Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Hamilton Cain

Fascist Buffoons

Timothy Egan chronicles the rise and fall of the KKK in the 1920s

Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland is a true tale of bigotry, cruelty, and the lust for power in 1920s Indiana. Egan will appear at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.

Read more

Art and Intimacy

Tom Lake is Ann Patchett at her best

The protagonist of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake tells her daughters the full story of her past. Or does she? Patchett will discuss Tom Lake at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville on July 31, Novel in Memphis on August 18, and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.

Read more

Bonds Across Time and Space

Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water braids stories over generations

Abraham Verghese mines the history of Kerala’s St. Thomas Christians — and larger debates about faith and science — in his sprawling second novel, The Covenant of Water. Verghese will discuss the book at a ticketed event at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 18.

Read more

Strategies for Survival

Margaret Verble’s Stealing weaves a tapestry of pain and resilience

In her latest novel, Stealing, Margaret Verble probes the ugly history of institutionalizing Native children through the story of one little girl in 1950s Oklahoma. Verble will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 9.

Read more

Life of Two

Margaret Verble weaves the real and imagined in When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In her beguiling When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, novelist Margaret Verble, a 2016 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, reimagines, for her own wily aims, the Nashville of a century ago, with allusions to Jim Crow, W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth, and the city’s white gentry.

Read more

Candlelit Suspense

A gripping story set in the waning days of the Italian Renaissance

In The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell spins a tale that flows like quicksilver beneath heavy gowns and gilt pageantry. O’Farrell will appear in conversation with Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 12.

Read more