December 3, 2013 Karen Spears Zacharias is a veteran author of nonfiction, but her new book, Mother of Rain, is a foray into historical fiction. Set during the Depression and World War II in a close-knit community in East Tennessee, the story centers on a troubled young woman, her first baby, and their Appalachian neighbors’ good-hearted efforts to save them both.
October 31, 2013 For Red Holler: Contemporary Appalachian Literature, John Branscum and Wayne Thomas have compiled a group of stories, essays, poems, and graphic narratives from the work of twenty-three Appalachian authors. As the book’s subtitle suggests, the selections are truly contemporary, and many stretch the boundaries of traditional literary forms. They also stretch the old Appalachian stereotypes of primitive violence, poverty, and ignorance.
August 16, 2013 Philip Mudd’s Takedown purports to be Inside the Hunt for Al Qaeda, and in some sense it is. More than that, though, it is a consideration of the way the American intelligence establishment responded to 9/11 and subsequent terrorist threats. It’s also a career memoir: Mudd, who now lives in Memphis, began in 1985 as a junior intelligence analyst at the CIA and rose to important managerial positions at both the CIA and the FBI. A dedicated insider, he respects the context in which he flourished and the people he worked with in the complex counterterrorist bureaucracy.
June 18, 2013 In Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin Kim Trevathan chronicles his kayak and canoe journeys upstream from flatwater, current-less lakes and reservoirs to places where rivers rise above the flooding and come alive. In this book that is both narrative and meditative, Trevathan samples rivers from Massachusetts to California to South Carolina, but he keeps returning to the rivers of Tennessee and Kentucky, his homeland.
May 22, 2013 Legions of historians have written narratives of Civil War battles bristling with footnotes and rigorous research. They would never presume to include the principal figures’ real-time thoughts or speculate about any conversations between them. Civil War novelist Jeff Shaara, on the other hand, has the freedom to invent. Though his books are also grounded in historical sources, he gives his characters life and includes richly detailed scenes, recreating the guns’ thunder, the ringing ears, the sweat mixing with dirt. Shaara will discuss A Chain of Thunder, his newest novel, on May 26, 2013, at 3 p.m. at the East Tennessee Historical Center in Knoxville.
April 17, 2013 John Muir, a young Scottish immigrant, set out on a walk from Indiana to the Gulf in the fall of 1867. In Restless Fires: Young John Muir’s Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf in 1867-68 historian James B. Hunt traces that walk through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. At the time, Muir was already a serious student of botany with a powerful calling to observe and collect species, especially in regions unfamiliar to him, but his thinking about the relationship of humans to the rest of nature was not yet completely formed. Hunt will discuss Restless Fires at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 24 at 6 p.m.
