Motherless Child
“A Haunting of My Own Name”
Damaged Goods
Both in and out of Place
The Best-Laid Plans
Chapter 16
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Paul V. Griffith

Eccentric Faith

Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director John Patrick Shanley talks with Chapter 16 about Doubt, faith, and theater

By Paul V. Griffith |

June 2, 2010 John Patrick Shanley’s 2005 play, Doubt: A Parable, won the Triple Crown for drama: a Tony Award, an Obie, and a Pulitzer Prize. The 2008 film version, which Shanley directed, stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman and was nominated for Critic’s Choice Award, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shanley is a product of parochial schools, a fact that figures heavily in the design of Doubt, the story of a mistrustful, conservative nun who suspects a progressive parish priest of having an inappropriate relationship with an altar boy. Shanley will be in Nashville as part of Lipscomb University’s thirtieth annual Christian Scholars’ Conference. He speaks at 4 p.m. on June 3 in the Collins Alumni Auditorium.

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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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Guitar Town

Facing what it means to lose the instrument of your dreams

By Paul V. Griffith |

May 7, 2010 Whether it’s a sixty-dollar pawnshop mutt or a purebred collectible, for musicians, a guitar is like a pet. They chose it. It’s theirs. It fits their lap; it fits their life. They keep it because it comforts them, and—as much as is possible for an inanimate object—they love it.

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Justice Delayed

Framed for murder and left to languish in a Nicaraguan prison, Eric Volz tells his story

By Paul V. Griffith |

May 5, 2010 In 2006, Eric Volz, a Californian with Nashville ties, was living and working in Managua, Nicaragua, when he received a phone call. A former girlfriend had been brutally raped and murdered. In the days that followed, Volz went from grieving ex-suitor to prime suspect. His trial and yearlong incarceration is a horror story of trumped-up charges, judicial corruption, and political intrigue; his release is a tale of hope. Eric Volz discusses and signs Gringo Nightmare at 7 p.m. on May 5 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville.

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Strange Fruit

Batt Humphreys fleshes out the story of Nealy Duncan, the last man hanged by the state of South Carolina

By Paul V. Griffith |

In the summer of 1910, the Charleston police arrested Daniel Cornelius “Nealy” Duncan, a black man, for the murder of a Jewish merchant. In spite of his court-appointed attorney’s Atticus Finch-like efforts, Duncan was found guilty by a kangaroo court and was hanged. By all accounts an upright citizen, Duncan was to be married five days after his alleged crime. He went to his grave calmly declaring his innocence. In Dead Weight, former CBS News producer Batt Humphreys fills the gaps in Duncan’s story. By turns a romance, mystery, courtroom drama, and history lesson, Dead Weight makes the most of its exhaustive research and Humphreys’ seemingly natural ability to spin a nail-biting yarn.

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Thou Shalt Not!

Christian writer and music-business escapee Matthew Paul Turner tells of his journey away from fundamentalism

By Paul V. Griffith |

When Paul Matthew Turner left his home in Virginia to attend Nashville’s Belmont University, he didn’t know what he was in for. Compared to his fundamentalist childhood, Belmont was a devil’s playground where plaid-shirted hipsters smoked clove cigarettes and listened to Amy Grant. Like a spiritual version of High Fidelity, Hear No Evil describes the way music helped Turner come to terms with this more-worldly version of the Christian faith. With a sly sense of humor and a mid-nineties soundtrack playing in his head, Turner discovers that Christianity is less a series of proscriptions than it is a way of living in a sometimes far-from-perfect world.

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