A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Book Reviews

You Get What You Need

By Jacqueline Zeisloft

In Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, Grammy-nominated folk musician Mary Gauthier unpacks her ideas around “what makes a song matter.” This investigation takes us through Gauthier’s personal narrative as a queer woman, a survivor of addiction, and an artist who reaches deep into the wounds of her childhood to reckon with her past traumas through song. Gauthier will discuss the book at a ticketed virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 6.

Tales of a Preservationist

By Emily Choate

The essays in Silas House: Exploring an Appalachian Writer’s Work reflect the high degree of respect and adoration that House has gained among his peers for his novels, music journalism, and plays, as well as his activism. Editor Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt gathers a thoughtful group of Appalachian scholars and literary writers to analyze House’s body of work. 

Stranded in Time

By Tina Chambers

The stories in Michael Amos Cody’s A Twilight Reel are peopled with complicated characters — lost, angry, grieving, lonely, violent, and filled with regret, each one searching for some kind of peace. The collection conjures up a small town poised on the brink of a new day, dragging the chains of buried secrets and sorrows firmly behind it.

A New Kind of Homecoming

By Bianca Sass

In her second novel, Learning to Speak Southern, Lindsey Rogers Cook tells the story of a globe-trotting woman forced to come home to Memphis, where she must confront her family’s complicated past, as well as the rage she feels toward the South.

The Story They Long For

By Bradley Sides

Mary Dixie Carter’s suspense-filled debut thriller, The Photographer, places us in the mind and world of a successful New York City photographer named Delta Dawn.

A Pretty Place to Die

By Ed Tarkington

Few writers today can boast of a body of work as wide-ranging and virtuosic as Chris Offutt’s. His novels and short stories bend genre and upend expectations. The Killing Hills is no exception: A taut, gripping thriller, it also draws us deep into the lives of its troubled characters with wit and compassion. Chris Offutt will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on June 17.

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