Chapter 16 - Part 33

All of Our Days

Courtney Miller Santo’s debut novel explores the complexities of mother/daughter relationships

By Tina LoTufo | August 15, 2012

August 15, 2012In The Roots of the Olive Tree, Memphis novelist Courtney Miller Santo chronicles the complicated relationships between five generations of mothers and daughters in a California family with a special propensity for long lifespans. Divided into five sections, this debut novel focuses on each of the women in turn—beginning with the feisty Keller family matriarch, 112-year-old Anna—and explores the stories of their lives, the ways in which they both need and resent one another, the memories they carry, and the secrets they hide—even from themselves. Santo will discuss The Roots of the Olive Tree at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on August 21 at 6 p.m. , at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 22 at 6:30 p.m., and at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

Telling Stories in Cowan

Rare book collectors gather for the third annual Tennessee Antiquarian Book Fair

By Tina LoTufo | August 13, 2012

August 13, 2012 On a sunny July day in the tiny town of Cowan, Tennessee (population: 1,700), forty-nine booksellers from twelve states and Canada recently gathered to buy, sell, and trade at the third annual Tennessee Antiquarian Book Fair, sponsored by the Tennessee Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association. Association president Tom McGee, a Cowan resident and local bookstore owner, proudly described the event as “the only major antiquarian book fair in America that takes place in a small town.”

Sacred Harmony

Editors Wendy Reed and Jennifer Horne have collected diverse essays on faith written by Southern women

By Tina LoTufo | July 6, 2012

July 6, 2012 In Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality, editors Wendy Reed and Jennifer Horne weave the voices of seventeen very different women into a complex meditation on spiritual beliefs and practices. Together, the essays examine what it means for a woman to question, reject, seek, find, lose, keep, live, and grow into (and out of) her faith over the course of a lifetime. As Reed and Horne explain, “With this book we are hoping to inspire conversation and encourage vulnerability, to challenge memory, to up the volume.” Three Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality contributors—Marilou Awaikta, Susan Cushman, and Beth Ann Fennelly—will read from their essays and sign copies of the collection at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on July 12 at 5 p.m.

The Cost of Silence

In her new memoir, Full Body Burden, Memphis writer Kristen Iversen recounts a childhood haunted by secrets

By Tina LoTufo | June 25, 2012

June 25, 2012 “My childhood has been shadowed by two enormous fears: my father’s alcoholism and Rocky Flats,” writes Kristen Iversen, director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Memphis. With honesty and dignity, Iversen explains how her increasingly troubled father and ineffectual mother created a fragile home life that depended on silence and secrets—an atmosphere not unlike that of the mismanaged and deadly dangerous nuclear-weapons facility at Rocky Flats, located near their suburban Colorado home. In Full Body Burden, Iversen illuminates the beauty of her childhood memories, but she does not flinch from uncovering the damage simultaneously inflicted upon her and her family, upon the land, and ultimately upon us all.

The Cowboy Life

Patricia McKissack and her son Frederick McKissack Jr., along with illustrator Randy DuBurke, have created a graphic novel about the most famous African-American cowboy

By Tina LoTufo | June 19, 2012

June 19, 2012 Award-winning children’s author Patricia McKissack collaborates with her son, Frederick McKissack Jr., to tell the unlikely and compelling story of the most famous African-American cowboy. Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love is a biography of Nat Love, a contemporary of General Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody, Billy the Kid, and the Masterson brothers. Love, a.k.a. “Deadwood Dick,” rose from slavery to become an accomplished and respected member of the Wild West community during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Vivid, colorful paintings by illustrator Randy DuBurke provide a stunning visual component to this graphic novel for adventurous readers aged twelve and up.

Too Many Guns and Too Much Moonshine

Kingsport native and bestselling author Lisa Alther takes on the legendary Hatfields and McCoys

By Tina LoTufo | June 4, 2012

June 4, 2012 In Blood Feud, New York Times-bestselling author Lisa Alther examines an unsavory bit of American history: the nineteenth-century feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families, residents of the Tug Fork Valley on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia. As a metaphor for divisive behavior, the Hatfields and McCoys have been ubiquitous in the American popular imagination for more than a hundred years. Featured in everything from song lyrics to children’s cartoons, they serve as the prototypes for the stereotypically ignorant, uncivilized, and violent “hillbilly” character of page, stage, and screen. In Blood Feud, Alther separates the truth from the tall tales. She will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 12 at 6 p.m.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly