Abundant Goodness
A Committed Conservative
She’s on the Bird
Good Sport
Chapter 16
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Out of the Fire

In Glenn Taylor’s sophomore novel, a rural marble factory is home to an oddball army intent on advancing the cause of civil rights—and exorcizing its own demons.

By Paul V. Griffith |

May 20, 2010 An ex-Marine, Loyal Ledford has seen things that will forever haunt his dreams. After serving in World War II, he returns to his job at a West Virginia glass factory. Increasingly restless, he marries the boss’s daughter and quits work with no other plan than to forge a better life for his young family. Aided by a crew of misfits, Ledford builds the Marrowbone Marble Company on ancient family land. In addition to manufacturing the decorative glass orbs, the Marrowbone “commune,” as it’s pejoratively known, becomes a hotbed of civil-rights activism. As Ledford and his diverse band resort to increasingly forceful tactics to unseat the status quo and preserve their lifestyle, author Glenn Taylor schools his readers on the complexity of violence and the nature of good and evil. Taylor will read from his book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 21 at 6 p.m.

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Underage in Margaritaville

Jennifer Holm’s new middle-grade reader captures the Key West of an earlier age

By Susannah Felts |

May 19, 2010 From the looks of the dust jacket, you might assume Turtle in Paradise tells a sand ‘n’ surf tale of a lucky young girl luxuriating in a beachside resort, perhaps in pursuit of a boy’s attention. Instead, Jennifer Holm’s wonderful new novel for middle-grade readers takes readers to Depression-era Key West, a place that looks to our heroine, eleven-year-old Turtle, like “a broken chair that’s been left out in the sun to rot.” Two-time Newbery winner Jennifer Holm appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 20 at 4 p.m.

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Standoff

Nathaniel Philbrick reconsiders Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn

By Ralph Bowden |

May 18, 2010 In the nineteenth century, America’s Manifest Destiny to occupy and exploit the West was an irresistible force. The ‘savages’ already living there were an inconvenience; they would have to yield. In most instances, the U.S. had its way, either by negotiation or in armed conflict. But not always. Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, updates the often-told story of how Sitting Bull’s remarkable alliance crushed Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. Philbrick appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 20 at 6 p.m.

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Writers’ Work

Sonny Brewer discusses the Southern work ethic, the future of the book, and editing a new collection of essays by writers about their day jobs

By Michael Ray Taylor |

May 17, 2010 If anyone ever had a finger on the pulse of Southern literature, that person is Sonny Brewer. The Alabama native is the author of four acclaimed novels and editor of the series Stories from the Blue Moon Café: Anthologies of Southern Writers. But perhaps his closest connections to the living literature of the South are Over the Transom Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama, which he owns, and the nonprofit Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, which he chairs. All of this connectivity to working Southern writers has led Brewer to a new kind of anthology: one about Southern writers at work. As in working at actual, sweaty jobs. Chapter 16 recently spoke with Brewer about the new book, The Railroad as Art: Southern Writers and Day Jobs, to be published in October by M.P. Publishing.

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Book Excerpt: The Railroad As Art

Real Work

By Rick Bragg |

May 17, 2010 Hang some of those tools on the wall, he told me, some of those chainsaws or chisels or big yard forks that would hold seventy pounds of rock in a single scoop. Hang ’em up high so you can see ’em real good, he told me, after you finally get yourself an easy job, and every time you feel like griping, take a long, hard look.

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"What the Birds Know"

By Stephanie Pruitt |

May 14, 2010 Stephanie Pruitt is a poet and teaching artist with community-based organizations including Youth Speaks Nashville and the Magdalene House. A Cave Canem Fellow and member of the Affrilachian Poets, Pruitt received the 2010 Academy of American Poets Prize, the 2009 Sedberry Prize, was a finalist for Poets and Writers’ Magazine‘s Maureen Egen Award, and was named one of “Forty Favorite Poets” by Essence magazine in honor of its fortieth anniversary. This week she will receive her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Vanderbilt University. Pruitt lives with her family in Nashville.

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