Indeed, the reader might hear an echo within this book: haven’t we heard this story before? Several times? Well, yes and no. In The Echo Within, Nashville native Robert Benson opens again the story of his journey as a wanderer, writer, and mystic. But this time, the echo sounds across new territory.
In Memphis and the Paradox of Place, Wanda Rushing explores the cultural, geographic, and economic influences of a city that holds a unique place in Tennessee and the world. Rushing’s nuanced investigation has real-world implications for Memphis’s future — and for cities such as New Orleans, which seem in a perpetual state of limbo.
Four college roommates reunite some twenty years later for a beach trip where old wounds resurface, secrets are revealed, and decisions get made that will change their lives. Sound familiar? It should. This is not remotely a new plotline for so-called “women’s novels,” but Chattanooga resident Cathy Holton brings a depth, humor, and warmth to Beach Trip that make this novel more than just a beach read.
On the topic of grief, Becca Stevens is wise, ruthless, mystified, and tender. Story after story supports the arc of her impossibly simple message: we are never alone. Love beats death every time.
The 1950s was a scary time, full of drop drills, McCarthyism, and Soviet boasts. It was also the golden age of horror movies. Aliens, mutants, zombies, and werewolves filled theater screens. Coincidence? Not in Ronald Kidd‘s The Year of the Bomb, a young-adult novel that explores the angst of growing up surrounded by real and imagined horror.
Peter Taylor (1917-1994) is usually referred to as a writer of place; his settings are most often the lower Ohio Valley and, as he called it, “the long green hinterland that is Tennessee.” But Taylor’s themes—change, evil, and political and private morality—are universal. A new edition of The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor, first published in 1969, reminds us of the author’s position in the pantheon of American short story writers and makes a powerful argument for his continued relevance in a changing world where relationships, both to place and to people, are more complex than they seem.
