Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Allowing a Little Sway

In two new poetry collections, Restoring the Narrative and Small Revolution, Jeff Hardin imagines a world with a little more room for imagination

By Beth Waltemath | May 5, 2016

May 5, 2016 “Quiet truths do not argue for their worth,” writes poet Jeff Hardin, who will read from his two latest volumes, Restoring the Narrative and Small Revolution, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 10, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. In a world where people go “deaf haranguing some agenda,” Hardin prefers “allowing / a little sway to what gets said or done.”

Giving Recognizable Shape to the Chaos of our Lives

Novelist Lee Smith’s new memoir is a must-read for aspiring writers—and everyone else

By Susannah Felts | May 4, 2016

May 4, 2016 With thirteen novels and four short-story collections to her credit, Lee Smith is virtually synonymous with Appalachian fiction. In her new memoir-in-essays, Dimestore, she takes readers with her on a tour of the places, people, and experiences that have shaped her life and her writing. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 11, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.

Three Girls, One Summer

An unlikely trio of friends in Kate DiCamillo’s Raymie Nightingale search for trust and healing

By Tracy Barrett | May 3, 2016

May 3, 2016 In Raymie Nightingale, two-time Newbery medalist Kate DiCamillo returns to small-town Florida to explore the relationship among three very different girls, each struggling with a difficult personal story. DiCamillo will discuss her seventh novel at the Nashville Public Library on May 7, 2016, at 2 p.m. and at the Memphis Public Library on May 8, 2016, at 1:30 p.m.

The Art of Attention

A new essay collection from the University of Tennessee honors Jeff Daniel Marion, beloved Appalachian poet and teacher

By Sarah Norris | April 28, 2016

April 28, 2016 Jeff Daniel Marion: Poet on the Holston celebrates the life and work of Appalachian poet Jeff Daniel Marion. Edited by Jesse Graves, Thomas Alan Holmes, and Ernest Lee, the anthology contains seventeen essays—including an autobiographical essay by Marion himself—an interview with the poet, and a detailed timeline of his life.

Join the Invaders

Shirletta J. Kinchen’s Black Power in the Bluff City explores the history of student activism in Memphis

By Lyda Phillips | April 27, 2016

April 27, 2016 Shirletta Kinchen’s Black Power in the Bluff City examines the way black youth in Memphis played a pivotal role in creating societal change, both before and after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Hotel in 1968. In the end, the struggle for equality became a children’s crusade, with high-school and college students leading the way.

Heroes from the Merchant Marine

Journalist William Geroux spotlights the impressive World War II sacrifice of men from small-town Virginia

By Ralph Bowden | April 26, 2016

April 26, 2016 Mathews County, Virginia, has a long tradition of supplying seafaring men to the Merchant Marine. In The Mathews Men, Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-Boats, William Geroux writes of the exceptional service and sacrifice during World War II of the seamen from Mathews County. He will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville May 3, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher