Lisa Alther’s Swan Song sends its grief-stricken 60-something heroine on a cruise
Swan Song: An Odyssey, the eighth novel by Kingsport native Lisa Alther, is a witty meditation on loss and longing in late-middle age.
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Jessica Pearce Rotondi explores her family’s grief in What We Inherit
The journalist Jessica Pearce Rotondi was 8 years old before she heard her mother speak the name of her uncle, Jack Pearce, who vanished when his plane was shot down over Laos in March 1972. In her propulsive memoir, What We Inherit, Rotondi probes her family’s agonized search for truth across three generations.
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Wayétu Moore flees from Liberia’s civil war and fights to be seen in race-obsessed America
In Wayétu Moore’s memoir, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, Moore details her flight from Liberia’s civil war, her disorientation in an America obsessed with skin color, and her search for the warrior-woman who helped her family escape.
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Say Nothing weaves the unsolved case of a disappeared Belfast mother into a history of the Troubles
In Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe masterfully combines the unsolved mystery of a kidnapped Belfast woman, the story of a secret oral history archive in Boston, and a richly reported history of the Troubles. A free online public masterclass on the book will be led by University of Tennessee, Knoxville professor Monica Black on June 10 at 7 p.m. EDT.
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Revelations about Nashville’s uncredited session musicians
Travis Stimeling’s Nashville Cats: Record Production in Music City examines the contributions of uncredited session musicians to the “Nashville Sound” and the emergence of the city as a recording center.
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A dedicated service dog narrates a funny guide to the complicated world of humans
With Zeus, Dog of Chaos, Kristin O’Donnell Tubb has written another charmer, sure to be popular with young dog lovers for its sheer joyful exuberance, while it also demonstrates the vital role service dogs play in the lives of those who benefit from their selfless loyalty. Kristin O’Donnell Tubb will discuss the book during a virtual launch party on Parnassus Books’ Facebook page on June 2.
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