Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Shades of Humanity

Ruta Sepetys’ young adult masterpiece becomes a graphic novel

Between Shades of Gray, an award-winning 2011 YA novel by Nashville writer Ruta Sepetys, has been adapted as a stunning graphic novel illustrated by Dave Kopka and a talented support team. The story explores the horrors of Stalin’s gulags as experienced by a young Lithuanian artist deported to Siberia in 1941 with her mother and brother.

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A Faith Observed

A posthumous collection of essays explores Rachel Held Evans’ spiritual vision

Bestselling author and self-described “religious overachiever” Rachel Held Evans describes a way of pursuing God that embraces uncertainty, vulnerability, and compassion in Wholehearted Faith, a posthumous collection of essays, co-authored by Jeff Chu.

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The Humanity in Every Person

Paper Bullets tells the story of an extraordinary pair of resistance fighters

In Paper Bullets: Two Women Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, Rhodes College historian Jeffrey H. Jackson has captured one of those stories from the edges of World War II, and the result is a fascinating examination of community and resistance, gender and sexuality, and what it means to recognize the humanity in every person.

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How Much Do We Owe the Dead?

In The Sentence, a customer’s ghost haunts a bookstore over the course of one harrowing year

Louise Erdrich’s bookstore-set ghost story, The Sentence, takes place between All Souls’ Eve 2019 and All Souls’ Eve 2020, a year of troubling, destabilizing events, when the “rules for being alive kept changing.” Erdrich will discuss The Sentence at a ticketed virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 9.

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Harm Reduction

Sam Quinones’ The Least of Us makes a compelling case for our survival

In The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, journalist Sam Quinones reveals the new street drugs that are decimating the lives of Americans — and the people who are fighting them in their communities. Quinones will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 5.

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“Willie Thomas Sr. and Harold Cash”

Book Excerpt: Black Cowboys of Rodeo

Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West by Keith Ryan Cartwright collects the stories of pioneering Black cowboys, placing their challenges and triumphs against the backdrop of America’s struggle for racial equality and social justice. Cartwright will appear at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 4.

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