Elevation
George Saunders’ Vigil raises nuanced questions about kindness and what we owe the living — and the dead. Saunders will discuss the book with Ann Patchett at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on January 30.
Book Reviews
‘When You’re Dead We’ll Cherish You Again’
In her mesmerizing debut, Helen of Troy, 1993, poet Maria Zoccola merges the mythological and the modern, casting Helen of Troy as a restless housewife and mother in Sparta, Tennessee. Zoccola will be a featured author at ETSU’s Emerging Writers Series on February 9.
Mississippi Delta Blues
W. Ralph Eubanks chronicles a long and brutal war on poor people in When It’s Darkness on the Delta.
The Devil Inside Me
In Cipher, Jeremy B. Jones, a professor at Western Carolina University, examines his ancestor’s encoded diaries as a means of uncovering his own hidden identity. Jones will be a featured author at ETSU’s Emerging Writers Series on February 9.
The Return of the Theological Novel
Brandon Taylor’s readers expect his novels to coalesce around deep philosophical thought. In his latest, Minor Black Figures, ideas about God function as the engine of the book.
Pulling the Loose Thread
Boss Brooks is a decidedly untidy Southern story that is both sensational — a small-town Tennessee banker fakes his own death using a corpse stolen on a dark winter night — and quietly devastating, especially for the family he left behind. His granddaughter Kathy Bingham Turner spent years researching what she and co-author Leon Alligood characterize as “The Lie,” a carefully orchestrated deception involving friends, family, and a community willing to believe the story it was told. Turner and Alligood will discuss Boss Brooks at Appalachian WordFest in Sevierville on February 28.
