Book Reviews

“We are all haunted by something — something we did or didn’t do — and the passing years either add to the weight or diminish it.” Those are the words of Lil, the loving but wounded woman at the heart of Jill McCorkle’s new novel, Hieroglyphics. The tormenting power of memory, and conflicting desires to escape and interrogate the past, shape the lives of all the characters in this poignant, deeply human story. Jill McCorkle will discuss Hieroglyphics at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 10 and at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.

Thomas Burton’s Voices Worth the Listening: Three Women of Appalachia invites readers into the lives of three women from the Blue Ridge Mountains, allowing them to tell their unique stories of struggle and resilience.

By turns heartbreaking and inspiring, Jordan Ritter Conn’s The Road from Raqqa recounts in vivid detail the triumphs and grim realities of a Syrian immigrant, Riyad Alkasem, struggling to make a new life in the U.S. while trying to maintain family bonds across the world. Conn will appear with Riyad Alkasem at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.

In Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey returns to the love and pain of her childhood and the trauma of her mother’s murder. Trethewey will appear at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.

Complex strands of cultural and personal history intersect in Odie Lindsey’s Some Go Home, an ambitious debut novel exploring the relationship between private trauma and public strife. Lindsey will discuss Some Go Home in virtual events hosted by the Southern Independent Booksellers Association on August 6 and the Southern Festival of Books, October 1-11.