A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Book Reviews

Best of the Achaeans

By Fernanda Moore

April 10, 2012 Madeline Miller’s debut novel, The Song of Achilles, aims to uncover the passionate love story hidden inside the greatest war epic in Western literature. The romantic leads are Achilles, the Greek war-hero par excellence, and Patroclus, his tent mate and best friend. Whether the men were actually lovers or simply “boon companions” has been up for debate since Homer first composed his epic saga of the Trojan War, but the love story Miller tells is glorious, and the context in which it plays out is faithful to the original. Miller will discuss The Song of Achilles at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17 at 6:30 p.m.

Not On Miss Julia’s Watch

By Faye Jones

April 5, 2012 While a major home-renovation project would keep most people busy, Miss Julia finds time to run to West Virginia to break a man out of the hospital and crash a snake-handling worship service. But in this thirteenth outing for Ann B. Ross’s popular heroine, things aren’t much quieter back home, where she must battle some New Age cultists for the body and soul of her carpenter. Ann B. Ross will discuss Miss Julia to the Rescue at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 9 at 6 p.m., at Books-A-Million in Nashville on April 10 at 7 p.m., and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on April 14 at 1 p.m.

The Cape Act

By Ed Tarkington

April 4, 2012 R.J. Smith can’t be accused of objectivity—his abject adoration of James Brown seeps onto nearly every page—but his acclaimed new bio of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business is exhaustively researched and makes a square accounting of Brown’s triumphs, humiliations, and criminal excesses. R.J. Smith will discuss The One: The Life and Music of James Brown in Nashville at Parnassus Books on April 5 at 6:30 p.m., and at Vanderbilt University’s First Amendment Center on April 6 at 9 a.m. Both events are free and open to the public, but the Vanderbilt event requires a reservation. Email heather.lefkowitz@vanderbilt.edu for admission.

Setting Out for the Promised Land

By Tina LoTufo

April 3, 2012 On February 1, 1968, Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death when a loose shovel fell into the mechanism of the garbage truck in which they were riding. Eleven days later, nearly one thousand sanitation, sewer, and roadway workers in Memphis began a city-wide strike for safer and more humane working conditions, higher and more consistent wages, and the right to have a voice in their own treatment. Two months after that, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on a motel balcony. Marching to the Mountaintop, Ann Bausum’s careful and thorough portrayal of this pivotal period, shows young readers how one event can set in motion forces powerful enough to change a city, a state, a nation—and maybe even the history of the world. Bausum will appear in Memphis at The Booksellers at Laurelwood on April 5 at 6 p.m.

Sewing Up Another Mystery in South Carolina

By Faye Jones

April 2, 2012 In Reap What You Sew, her sixth Southern Sewing Circle mystery, Elizabeth Lynn Casey returns to Sweet Briar, South Carolina, where Tori Sinclair has her dream job as the director of the town’s library, is engaged to a handsome and kind schoolteacher, and—perhaps most important—is now firmly ensconced in the town’s sewing circle, which has become family to her. But then a murder occurs, and Tori’s new friends are implicated. The result is a classic Casey cozy. To celebrate the fourth anniversary of Mysteries & More in Nashville, Elizabeth Lynn Casey will discuss and sign copies of Reap What You Sew on April 7 at 2 p.m.

Showing Up for Life

By Tina LoTufo

March 28, 2012 “On Memorial Day 2002 I woke up and decided to leave my husband,” begins Margaret Overton’s memoir, Good in a Crisis. Her husband of twenty years, a surgeon, does not object to the divorce as it gives him more time to spend with his young girlfriend. As if this situation were not stressful enough, Overton, a Chicago anesthesiologist with two teenaged daughters, suffers a brain aneurysm a few months later. Good in a Crisis is the story of how she survives the dissolution of her marriage and a life-threatening illness at the same time—with the help of her family and friends and a healthy sense of humor—and all the lessons she learns (mostly the hard way) in the process. Margaret Overton will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 4 at 6:30 p.m.

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