A Runaway’s Story
Rachel M. Hanson’s The End of Tennessee takes readers inside a teen girl’s decision to run away from an abusive home and her struggle to create a new life.
Book Reviews
A Country of Purity
In Tell Me Everything, Strout unites her most famous and beloved characters — Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, and Bob Burgess — in a haunting but nevertheless optimistic examination of the way we depend on stories to survive. Strout will appear at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on September 12.
A Place Called Vulnerable
Award-winning writer Karen Salyer McElmurray’s collection of essays, I Could Name God in Twelve Ways, is many things at once: memoir, travelogue, and prayer. McElmurray reflects on her upbringing in rural Kentucky, her adventurous youth traveling the world, and her career as a writer and professor.
Variations on the Immigrant Life
In his debut story collection, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. uses a broad array of literary styles and emotional registers to capture the breadth of the immigrant experience. He will discuss the book at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
A Man of the Book
Set on and around Lookout Mountain, Jamie Quatro’s Two-Step Devil is a sharp-edged, tangy novel, layered with the region’s mysteries. Quatro will appear at The Granfalloon in Chattanooga on September 10, The Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Knoxville on September 20, and the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 26-27.
Finding the Divine
The Kingdom of the Poor, Charles Strobel’s posthumous memoir, is a story-rich portrait of his life of service to Nashville’s poor and disenfranchised. Editors Katie Seigenthaler and Amy Frogge, along with Room in the Inn executive director Rachel Hester and journalist Kay West, will discuss the book at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville on September 14.
