Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Isle of Dreams

With her magical first novel, songwriter Amy Foster has another hit on her hands

By Lacey Galbraith | December 9, 2009

In Amy S. Foster‘s debut novel, When Autumn Leaves, a female healer catches lightning in a bottle because the island town of Avening is a place where events defy logical explanation. The novel, like its setting, is a cozy one. The citizens of Avening, who long ago grew “to accept the bizarre anomalies as normal,” always have a warm cup of peppermint tea at the ready for a visiting neighbor or friend. This is a book about the miraculous, the magical, and the vibrantly hopeful, and its charm lingers long after the book is closed.

Searching for the Promised Land

Bruce Feiler finds Moses in America

By Chris Scott | December 3, 2009

In a tour-de-force of popular history, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, author Bruce Feiler has contributed a genuinely new idea, proposing that the ancient tale of a Hebrew prophet forms a key narrative underlying the ongoing experiment that is the United States. According to Feiler, this narrative has had a profound impact on individuals, movements, and even the founding of the republic itself. America’s Prophet is a book about the power of a story to inspire a people who are always searching for the path to freedom.

Redemption Song

Andrew B. Lewis follows the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and its leaders from Nashville’s north side into the heart of Dixie

By Lyda Phillips | December 3, 2009

A group of earnest and thoughtful Nashville students became leaders in one of history’s most impressive—and successful—mass movements, as they threw their bodies, their very lives, on the line to end segregation in the South. The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation, by Andrew B. Lewis,, is a new look at this era, examining it through the lens of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and its leaders—Diane Nash, John Lewis, Bob Moses, Stokely Carmichael, Marion Barry, Bob Zellner, and Julian Bond.

The Widower of the South

In A Separate Country, Robert Hicks takes a turn around war-scarred New Orleans with the Confederate general who searched for redemption there

By Lacey Galbraith | November 19, 2009

Robert Hicks dreams big. In A Separate Country, his new novel, he re-imagines in 400-plus pages the life and last days of the mythic John Bell Hood, former general of the Confederate States of America. This sort of endeavor is only natural for a man whose first novel was The New York Times bestseller The Widow of the South and who is now leader of Franklin’s Charge: A Vision and Campaign for the Preservation of Historic Open Space. Hicks has never shied from the big task, whether fighting the Herculean sprawl of Williamson County or imagining the thoughts of a legendary figure.

Fearless Fighter for an Ignoble Cause

Madison Smartt Bell writes a fictional biography of the deeply flawed Confederate warrior Nathan Bedford Forrest

By Maria Browning | November 19, 2009

The subject of Madison Smartt Bell‘s Devil’s Dream is enough to send a lot of readers—even Bell’s fans—running for the exits. A hefty novel on Confederate hero Nathan Bedford Forrest may not be an alluring prospect, unless you happen to belong to the dwindling cohort of folks who go misty-eyed when they hear “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” From its first paragraphs, however, Devil’s Dream defies expectations, combining meticulous research and vivid accounts of warfare with a complex character study of the South’s dubious hero. On November 20 at 7 p.m., Madison Smartt Bell will discuss Devil’s Dream at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville.

A Political Awakening

D’Army Bailey recounts his student days of protest and outrage

By Maria Browning | November 12, 2009

D’Army Bailey has embraced many roles in public life. He’s been an activist, a politician, and a distinguished jurist, serving on the Circuit Court bench in Memphis since 1990. He was instrumental in the founding of the National Civil Rights Museum, and he’s also done a few turns as an actor, appearing in films like How Stella Got Her Groove Back and The People v. Larry Flynt. No doubt he has many stories to tell, but in The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist’s Journey 1959-1964, he confines his memoir to one narrow segment of history: his college years, when he evolved from a very bright, conventional young man to a civil-rights firebrand who was expelled from his all-black school for leading student protests.

Camilla and the Caterpillars

By Frances Figart, illustrated by Matt Brass
Smokies Life
68 pages
$14.95

A young girl’s encounter with an extraordinary caterpillar in the Great Smoky Mountains leads her and her family on a quest to plant a national park right in their own backyard.

This environmentally themed chapter book for ages 6 through 11 introduces young readers to important ecological concepts including habitat loss and the interdependence of native species and offers a compelling grassroots solution through native-plant gardening that invites anyone to take part in addressing the growing biodiversity crisis.

~the publisher