An Enlightened Message
Nature’s Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World, the second book from Sewanee-based writer Patrick Dean, relates the history of a little-known man and his greatest achievement.
Book Reviews
Poetry of Goodbye
In Valediction: Poems and Prose, Linda Parsons meditates on what is essential in life as she weeds the garden, weathers a pandemic, and weighs her personal losses. Parsons will read from her work at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 24.
Wonder Boy of the South
In The Last Lap, William Walker offers an unforgettable look at Pete Kreis’ life and death on the Indy racing circuit and an engrossing history of the birth and rise of the sport.
The Sublime and the Ridiculous
Richard Ford’s latest Frank Bascombe novel, Be Mine, marks Frank’s fifth and purportedly final curtain call as whimsical Everyman, shrewdly dissecting the shifting landscape of American life and his uncertain place in it.
No Laughing Matter?
Harrison Scott Key’s new memoir, How to Stay Married, relates his wife’s infidelity, his own loss of faith, and the implosion of his marriage followed by its unlikely resurrection. It’s a hoot. Really.
Choice Poor
Julia Franks’ second novel, The Say So, serves as a cautionary tale exploring the starkly different choices unwed mothers in the 1950s faced compared to those in the post-Roe 1980s. Her cross-generational narrative was inspired in part by her own unplanned pregnancy. Franks will appear at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on June 14.
