Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

A Fragile Juggernaut

Nashville nonfiction author Jefferson Cowie reinterprets the New Deal and its legacy

Jefferson Cowie’s The Great Exception challenges our understanding of the New Deal and its implications for today. The Nashville-based nonfiction author will deliver the Belle McWilliams Lecture in American History at the University of Memphis on February 15.

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Empowering Adventure

Young readers learn to challenge injustice in Tracy Barrett’s new middle-grade series

In Tracy Barrett’s Marabel and the Book of Fate, a thirteen-year-old princess searches for her kidnapped twin and learns to recognize the injustices of her kingdom. Barrett will launch her new series at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 10.

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Welcome to the Machine

Characters come of age in the secret city of Oak Ridge in Janet Beard’s The Atomic City Girls

The Atomic City Girls by East Tennessee native Janet Beard is set within the top-secret “instant city” of Oak Ridge during World War II. Beard will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 13 and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 14.

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The Spiritual Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder

Stephen W. Hines considers the religious faith of a very famous pioneer

Stephen W. Hines’s new book, A Prairie Girl’s Faith, discusses the spiritual legacy of beloved children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder: “The sacredness of home and hearth are everywhere present” in the Little House books, he writes.

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To Call Forth By Noticing

For Nashville poet Lisa Dordal, paying attention is a kind of prayer

It’s difficult to make a poetics out of forgiveness, but that’s what Lisa Dordal accomplishes in her new collection, Mosaic of the Dark. Dordal will give three Nashville readings: at The Post on February 6, at Atmalogy on February 9, and at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on February 21.

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A Weirdly Wonderful World

Chattanooga author Natalie Lloyd chronicles the exploits of a most unusual family

Young readers with an appreciation for offbeat adventure stories will no doubt be delighted by Natalie Lloyd’s imaginative world and its lively, brave inhabitants in The Problim Children.

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