Chapter 16 - Part 222

Home to the Mountain

In Ronald Kidd’s new middle-grade novel, a boy’s journey leads to understanding

By Tracy Barrett | August 31, 2018

Ronald Kidd’s new middle-grade novel, Lord of the Mountain, is set in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1927—the time and place of country music’s “big bang.” Kidd will appear at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 12-14.

The Darkness at the Door

Brantley Hargrove tells the story of a storm-chasing, tornado-catching legend

By Tina Chambers | August 30, 2018

Tim Samaras, writes Brantley Hargrove in The Man Who Caught the Storm, “accomplished meteorology’s equivalent to the moon landing.” Hargrove will appear at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 12-14.

Blood on the Tracks

Colson Whitehead constructs an alternate route out of American slavery in The Underground Railroad

By Steve Haruch | August 29, 2018

In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, fugitive slaves are spirited away to freedom by an actual network of trains. The Underground Railroad is the 2018 Memphis Reads selection. Whitehead will discuss the novel at Christian Brothers University on September 5 and at Rhodes College on September 6. Both events are free and open to the public.

My Work is Done

In Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels, a dying patriarch gathers his family

By Sean Kinch | August 28, 2018

Big Angel de la Cruz, protagonist of Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels, is dying and hopes to make peace with his family before he dies. Urrea will appear at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 12-14.

Seeing with Twenty-First-Century Eyes

Nell Painter, a renowned historian, finds a new identity as an artist

By Maria Browning | August 27, 2018

In her memoir, Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, Nell Painter writes about learning to see art, and herself, in new ways. Painter will appear at the 2018 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 12-14.

American, No Hyphen

Tayari Jones talks with Chapter 16 about her newest novel, An American Marriage

By Peggy Burch | August 24, 2018

Tayari Jones, who will talk about her novel An American Marriage during the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 12-14, sets her fiction in Atlanta because the urban South is “a microcosm of all the issues facing the country.”

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker