Fiction

In Amy S. Foster‘s debut novel, When Autumn Leaves, a female healer catches lightning in a bottle because the island town of Avening is a place where events defy logical explanation. The novel, like its setting, is a cozy one. The citizens of Avening, who long ago grew “to accept the bizarre anomalies as normal,” always have a warm cup of peppermint tea at the ready for a visiting neighbor or friend. This is a book about the miraculous, the magical, and the vibrantly hopeful, and its charm lingers long after the book is closed.

Robert Hicks dreams big. In A Separate Country, his new novel, he re-imagines in 400-plus pages the life and last days of the mythic John Bell Hood, former general of the Confederate States of America. This sort of endeavor is only natural for a man whose first novel was The New York Times bestseller The Widow of the South and who is now leader of Franklin’s Charge: A Vision and Campaign for the Preservation of Historic Open Space. Hicks has never shied from the big task, whether fighting the Herculean sprawl of Williamson County or imagining the thoughts of a legendary figure.

The subject of Madison Smartt Bell‘s Devil’s Dream is enough to send a lot of readers—even Bell’s fans—running for the exits. A hefty novel on Confederate hero Nathan Bedford Forrest may not be an alluring prospect, unless you happen to belong to the dwindling cohort of folks who go misty-eyed when they hear “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” From its first paragraphs, however, Devil’s Dream defies expectations, combining meticulous research and vivid accounts of warfare with a complex character study of the South’s dubious hero. On November 20 at 7 p.m., Madison Smartt Bell will discuss Devil’s Dream at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville.