“To a Southerner, any place outside of the South is ‘out there.’ There’s the South, and then there’s everywhere else,” writes Claire Fullerton in her novel Little Tea. Celia Wakefield has worked hard to put the tragic events of her Southern upbringing behind her, but when her friends are in trouble, she must go home again.
The latest offering from iconic Southern writer Lee Smith is Blue Marlin, a sweet and funny novella loosely based on her family. Smith says in an afterword, “Of all the stories I’ve ever written, this one is dearest to me, capturing the essence of my own childhood.”
Chattanooga author J. Kasper Kramer talks with Chapter 16 about her debut novel for middle grade readers, The Story That Cannot Be Told, which portrays one brave girl’s fight against injustice during the months leading up to the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
“It was a bitch growing up in Birmingham. Unless you were white. And Earl B. Peterson wasn’t white,” writes Maryville author Rhonda Lynn Rucker in her young adult novel, Welcome to Bombingham. Rucker shines a spotlight on the systemic racism and unchecked violence that plagued the black community in early 1960s Birmingham, Alabama.
“Someone is stealing Tennessee’s boys. Report suspicious behavior.” Ominous messages on local billboards set the scene in Court Stevens’ latest young adult mystery, The June Boys.
In Susan Beckham Zurenda’s debut novel, Bells for Eli, narrator Delia Green describes her close relationship through the years with her cousin Eli, whose family lives across the street in the small town of Green Branch, South Carolina. Their bond endures in the wake of an accident that changes both their lives forever. Zurenda will discuss Bells for Eli at The Arts Building in Chattanooga on March 2.
