2004 SEBA Book Award Winners

SIBA Bestseller List
Reporting Stores
SIBA Recommended Books
SIBA Book Awards
Book Sense Awards
The Spoken Word

Fiction

Clyde Edgerton
Shannon Ravenel Books
September 2003 $22.95
1565121953

In his eighth deliciously funny novel, Clyde Edgerton introduces us to the irrepressible Lil Olive, who's recently arrived at the Rosehaven Convalescence Center to recuperate from a bad fall. Lil longs to be back in her own apartment, and since her driver's license doesn't expire until her ninety-seventh birthday, she also longs to get back behind the wheel of her sporty '89 Olds. To pass the time until independence, Lil strikes up some new friendships. Mrs. Maudie Lowe and Mrs. Beatrice Satterwhite, who are laying bets on whether Clara Cochran's glass eye comes out at night. And L. Ray Flowers, the freelance evangelical preacher with fancy white hair who sings his sermons, strums a mean guitar, and aspires to an even higher calling. Keeping a watchful eye on them all is Carl, Lil's middle-aged bachelor nephew with a heart of gold and the patience of a saint. But soon Rosehaven is turned upside down and the outcome is anyone's guess. Lil and the girls steal a car and hit the highway. L. Ray's vision of a national movement to unite churches and nursing homes (Nurches of America) is embraced by the residents. And then there's Darla Avery's dirty little secret, which could spell the end for the visionary preacher.
Edgerton looks at the challenges of aging with sympathy, sensitivity, and his trademark sense of humor. Like the bestseller Walking Across Egypt, this is vintage Edgerton: wise, wistful, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Nonfiction

Deborah Ford
Dutton Books
April 2003 $22.95
0525947264

From the woman who made a multimillion dollar business out of the acronym Grits--Girls Raised In The South--comes this irresistible collection that's full of Southern charm, with advice, true-life stories, wisdom, and recipes.

Cookbook

Edna Lewis
Alfred A. Knopf
April 2003 $35
0375400354

Edna Lewis--whose The Taste of Country Cooking has become an American classic--and Alabama-born chef Scott Peacock pool their unusual cooking talents to give us this unique cookbook. What makes it so special is that it represents different styles of Southern cooking--Miss Lewis's Virginia country cooking and Scott Peacock's inventive and sensitive blending of new tastes with the Alabama foods he grew up on, liberally seasoned with Native American, Caribbean, and African influences. Together they have taken neglected traditional recipes unearthed in their years of research together on Southern food and worked out new versions that they have made their own.
Every page of this beguiling book bears the unmistakable mark of being written by real hands-on cooks. Scott Peacock has the gift for translating the love and respect they share for good home cooking with such care and precision that you know, even if you've never tried them before, that the Skillet Cornbread will turn out perfect, the Crab Cakes will be "Honestly Good," and the four-tiered Lane Cake something spectacular.
Together they share their secrets for such Southern basics as pan-fried chicken (soak in brine first, then buttermilk, before frying in good pork fat), creamy grits (cook slowly in milk), and genuine Southern biscuits, which depend on using soft flour, homemade baking powder, and fine, fresh lard (and on not twisting the biscuit cutter when you stamp out the dough). Scott Peacock describes how Miss Lewis makes soup by coaxing the essence of flavor from vegetables (the She-Crab and Turtle soups taste so rich they can be served in small portions in demitasse cups), and he applies the same principle to hisintensely flavored, scrumptious dish of Garlic Braised Shoulder Lamb Chops with Butter Beans and Tomatoes. You'll find all these treasures and more before you even get to the superb cakes (potential "Cakewalk Winners" all), the hand-cranked ice creams, the flaky pies, and homey custards and puddings.
Interwoven throughout the book are warm memories of the people and the traditions that shaped these pure-
tasting, genuinely American recipes. Above all, the Southern table stands for hospitality, and the authors demonstrate that the way everything is put together--with the condiments and relishes and preserves and wealth of vegetables all spread out on the table--is what makes the meal uniquely Southern. Every occasion is celebrated, and at the back of the book there are twenty-two seasonal menus, from A Spring Country Breakfast for a Late Sunday Morning and A Summer Dinner of Big Flavors to An Alabama Thanksgiving and A Hearty Dinner for a Cold Winter Night, to show you how to mix and match dishes for a true Southern table.
Here, then, is a joyful coming together of two extraordinary cooks, sharing their gifts. And they invite you to join them.

Poetry

Fred Chappell (Editor)
Louisiana State University Press
March 2003 $18.95
0807128643

The Fellowship of Southern Writers was founded in 1987 under the inspiration of Cleanth Brooks for the purpose of encouraging excellence and recognizing distinction in southern letters. Membership is by invitation only, and the group meets biennially and bestows prizes in fiction. poetry, drama, and nonfiction. Locales thus represents poetry of truly superlative quality, gathering works by Fellowship members and by esteemed writers who have won Fellowship awards for verse: A. R. Ammons, James Applewhite, Wendell Berry, Fred Chappell, Kelly Cherry, James Dickey, George Garrett, Rodney Jones, Andrew Hudgins, T. R. Hummer, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Morgan, Dave Smith, Henry Taylor, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Robert Penn Warren, and Charles Wright. Chosen by Fred Chappell, these poems reflect the truth that the general is most securely held to when in the grip of the particular. They are not just specific, not only regional, but tightly joined to highly detailed places within the southern sphere, wielding a far greater force and universal application than a placeless poetry might have. This "southern gazette with mountains and valleys, forests and farms, rivers and marshes, graveyards and barrooms, " as Fred Chappell describes the volume, offers a lyrical topography of the southern--and of the American--spirit that is inviting, entertaining, always surprising, and sometimes ominous. Far from being of merely regional interest, Locales demonstrates that there is no place, however small or remote or obscure, that cannot call forth a resonant outcry of the heart. An anthology of seventeen of the South's most celebrated contemporary poets

Children's

Melinda Long (author)
David Shannon (illustrator)
Harcourt Children's Books
September 2003 $16
0152018484

When Braid Beard's pirate crew invites Jeremy Jacob to join their voyage, he jumps right on board. Buried treasure, sea chanteys, pirate talk--who wouldn't go along? Soon Jeremy Jacob knows all about being a pirate. He throws his food across the table and his manners to the wind. He hollers like thunder and laughs off bedtime. It's the heave-ho, blow-the-man-down, very best time of his life. Until he finds out what pirates "don't do--no reading bedtime stories, no tucking kids in. . . . Maybe being a pirate isn't so great after all.
Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator David Shannon teams up with witty storyteller Melinda Long for a hilarious look at the finer points of pirate life.