Chapter 16 - Part 9

Mother Love

In her latest novel, The Midwife, Jolina Petersheim ponders what it means to be a mother

By Faye Jones | October 23, 2014

October 23, 2014 In Dry Hollow, Tennessee, Hopen Haus takes in unwed pregnant women, and head midwife Rhoda Mummau struggles to provide the best care for them even as she keeps the whole Mennonite community at arm’s length to protect a secret from her own past. For her new novel, The Midwife, Jolina Petersheim taps her Mennonite heritage to consider the question of what exactly makes a woman a mother.

Walking the Good Path

Linda Leaming, who found happiness in Bhutan, has some advice for worried Westerners

By Faye Jones | September 29, 2014

September 29, 2014 In A Field Guide to Happiness: What I Learned in Bhutan about Living, Loving, and Waking Up, Linda Leaming combines fascinating descriptions of a mystical country with funny, touching, and sometimes harrowing stories about her life there. It’s enough to make even the most travel-phobic reader dream about buying a plane ticket for this hard-to-reach land. Leaming will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 1, 2014, and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

The Weight of Love

Set against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War, Katy Simpson Smith’s assured debut considers the complexities of human relationships

By Faye Jones | September 5, 2014

September 5, 2014 The Story of Land and Sea, Katy Simpson Smith’s debut novel, considers parental love, faith, and friendship in coastal North Carolina at the end of the American Revolution. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 11, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Hell is Other People (and Other Ghosts)

In Rooms, Lauren Oliver explores the secrets that haunt both the living and the dead

By Faye Jones | August 28, 2014

August 28, 2014 Lauren Oliver, internationally bestselling author of young-adult novels, makes her debut for adults with Rooms, a ghost story. In the novel, Richard Walker’s death brings home his bitter ex-wife and estranged children, and memories associated with the house add to tensions between them. But they are not the only ones trapped by memories of this house: Alice and Sandra, now ghosts who once lived and died there, have their secrets, too. Lauren Oliver will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 10-12. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Behind the Quirks

Martha Woodroof explores the heartaches and hopes at a small fictional college

By Faye Jones | August 14, 2014

August 14, 2014 Martha Woodroof’s debut novel, Small Blessings, features a collection of eccentrics at a small women’s college in Virginia and examines the heartaches and hopes beneath their quirks. Woodroof will discuss Small Blessings at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on August 24, 2014, at 2 p.m., and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 25, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

A Love Letter to Books

In The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin pays homage to readers

By Faye Jones | August 7, 2014

August 7, 2014 In her new novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Gabrielle Zevin celebrates books and those who read them. Based loosely on the hero of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, that high-school standard, A.J. Fikry is a sad man whose life is changed when a baby is left in his store. Gabrielle Zevin will discuss the novel at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

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