A dime-store scrapbook preserves priceless seventy-year-old memories
“Stayed here on our wedding night,” is the first entry in the scrapbook. Accompanying her text is a linen-paper postcard of the Hayes Hotel in Jackson, Michigan. My parents spent an entire month driving to California and back, a lengthy journey even today, and a grand expedition in the 1940s, before the wide availability of air conditioning and the franchising of America.
Read more
Adrienne Berard’s Water Tossing Boulders looks at the American civil-rights movement through a new lens
Adrienne Berard will discuss Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South at Bookstock, a celebration held at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library in Memphis on April 29. Bookstock is held annually and this year will feature appearances by forty area authors, food trucks, live music, and a host of children’s activities, including face painting, arts and crafts, and story time. All events are free and open to the public.
Read more
Jim Dickinson’s memoir is a powerful journey through Memphis music
Jim Dickinson’s memoir, I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone, works its way through the musical landscape of rock’n’roll, soul, and the blues—Memphis-style. Mary Lindsay Dickinson will read from her late husband’s book at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 27 at 1 p.m. A musical performance by Some Sons of Mudboy will follow the reading.
Read more
With The Fix David Baldacci cements the success of yet another page-turning series
Suspense master David Baldacci’s The Fix, third installment in the Amos Decker series, joins five other successful novel series developed by the prolific author. Baldacci will discuss The Fix at the Nashville Public Library on April 17 at 6:15 p.m.
Read more
The world of children’s lit mourns the loss of the legendary Patricia C. McKissack
Middle Tennessee native Patricia C. McKissack, acclaimed author and storyteller, died near her home in Missouri on April 7. Her body of work, which includes many books written with her late husband Fredrick, did much to champion the African American experience.
Read more
Otis Sanford traces the twists and turns in Memphis politics
Otis Sanford tells a lively history of power and race in From Boss Crump to King Willie, a political history of twentieth-century Memphis, bookended by two towering figures: E.H. Crump and W.W. Herenton.
Read more
