Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River enters the mind of a remarkable 18th-century woman
In her latest novel, The Frozen River, Ariel Lawhon depicts the inner world of Martha Ballard, a real 18th-century American midwife and healer who kept a diary of her extraordinary life. Lawhon will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on December 5.
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Anna Olswanger’s A Visit to Moscow depicts a modern exodus
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In 1965, an American rabbi investigating persecution of Jews in the former Soviet Union escaped KGB handlers to make a remarkable discovery, as told in A Visit to Moscow, a graphic history by Memphis native Anna Olswanger.
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Theresa Levitt’s Elixir chronicles an early collaboration between perfumers and chemists
In Elixir, historian Theresa Levitt shows how perfumers and chemists in revolutionary and post-revolutionary France set out to unveil the mystery of life. Levitt will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on December 5.
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Gordon A. Martin revisits United States v. Lynd, the civil rights case that forever changed the South
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Most Americans are familiar with the landmark civil-rights case Brown v. Board of Education. Less known is United States v. Lynd, the 1962 trial that paved the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote is an account of the groundbreaking trial that put Hattiesburg, Mississippi, at the center of the civil-rights debate. Written by Gordon A. Martin, Jr., one of the Justice Department attorneys in the case, the book uses oral history, legal commentary, and first-person reportage to put readers on the front row of a trial that forever changed the nature of race relations in Mississippi and the South.
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Ray Trotter’s short story collection of Southern gems shines
Ray Trotter assembles a stylized, bite-sized, pure personality of a debut short story collection, And Dogs to Chase Them, exploring the quirks and nuances of rural Southern living.
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Monic Ductan gathers stories of tangled small-town legacies in Daughters of Muscadine
Cookeville writer Monic Ductan’s debut story collection, Daughters of Muscadine, reveals the entangled historical and psychological legacies at work in several generations of Black families in Muscadine, a fictional rural town in northeast Georgia.
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