March 19, 2013 In 1958, institutional racism infected all life in the deep South. Because of distant threats—court decisions, freedom riders, and the like—its influence was perhaps more entrenched than ever. Yet many whites seemed oblivious to its pernicious effects. In James Williamson’s novel, The Ravine, a thirteen-year-old boy from a privileged white family in Memphis spends the summer in a small Mississippi community, where a violent tragedy changes his life profoundly.

March 13, 2013 Cary Holladay’s lyrical new collection of linked stories, Horse People, follows various members of a prosperous family in Orange County, Virginia, from the Civil War through World War II and beyond. Holladay crafts small, intimate portraits of her characters as they confront timeless themes of birth and death, compassion and cruelty, memory and loss, and the many guises of both cowardice and courage. She will read from and sign copies of Horse People at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on March 22 at 5:30 p.m., and in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville on March 28 at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.