Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Toward the Trail of Tears

Peter Cozzens’ new history describes the largest war between the United States and Native Americans

The vicious Creek War determined control of the Southeast. In A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South, Peter Cozzens places Old Hickory at the war’s epicenter.

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Scarred Souls

In Michael Farris Smith’s Salvage This World, a young mother seeks shelter with her estranged father

In Michael Farris Smith’s Salvage This World, a young mother, fleeing unknown pursuers, seeks asylum with her estranged father while a hurricane threatens to decimate the Gulf Coast. Smith will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on May 1 and Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 2.

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Not Too Blue

Songwriter Lucinda Williams offers a transparent view of a life spent writing and healing

In her new memoir Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Lucinda Williams tells the backstory of her songs and her life.

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A Part, a Whole, a Root, a Bloom

Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds links the stories of two women botanists

Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds links the stories of two unnamed women, working in different centuries, who both find themselves apprenticed to male botanists cataloguing every species of plant growing among the stones of the Roman Colosseum.

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Tales She’ll Tell

The past, present, and future collide in Lee Smith’s Silver Alert

Lee Smith’s ability to spin tragedy into comedy is challenged as never before in her new novel, Silver Alert, as a motley cast of characters navigates a world filled with pain and loss, while at least one stubbornly clings to her hope for a better future.

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Trailblazers in Space

Meredith Bagby’s The New Guys remembers NASA’s Astronaut Class 8

Meredith Bagby spotlights NASA’s first diverse astronaut class, which included Tennessean Rhea Seddon, in The New Guys.

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