Okra Picks: Great Southern Books Fresh Off the Vine
2011 Fall Okra Picks
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- Last Updated on Friday, 26 October 2012 19:25
The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn McCrumb
Thomas Dunne, September 2011
Laura Foster, a simple country girl, was murdered and her lover Tom Dula was hanged for the crime. With the help of historians, lawyers, and researchers, McCrumb visited the actual sites, studied the legal evidence, and uncovered a missing piece of the story that will shock those who think they already know what happened.
The Chamomile: A Novel of Revolutionary America by Susan Craft
Ingalls Publishing Group, November 2011
Lilyan Cameron joins Patriot Spies in British occupied Charlestown, SC, to rescue her brother from a notorious prison ship. I'll lie, steal, kill or be killed, she promises Nicholas Xanthakos, a scout with Francis Marion's partisans, who leads the mission. In Nicholas' arms she discovers enduring love. A home. But a home that is a long time coming. Her journey requires she save the life of one British officer and kill another to save her Cherokee friend. In escaping bounty hunters, she treks 200 miles of wilderness and very nearly loses everthing before finaly reuniting with her true love.
Cold Glory by B. Kent Anderson
Forge, October 2011
When the first page of a shocking Civil War-era document is unearthed in Oklahoma, history professor Nick Journey is called in to evaluate the find--and is promptly attacked by two men armed with Special Forces weapons.
Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry
St. Martin's Press, August 2011
"On the coast of Alabama, there is a house cloaked in mystery, a place that reveals the truth and changes lives..."
Ellie Calvin is caught in a dying marriage, and she knows this. With her beloved daughter away at college and a growing gap between her and her husband - between her reality and the woman she wants to be - she doesn't quite seem to fit into her own life.
But everything changes after her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away. Ellie's world turns upside down when she sees her ex-boyfriend, Hutch, at her mother's funeral and learns that he is in charge of a documentary that involved Lillian before her death. He wants answers to questions that Ellie's not sure she can face, until, in the painful midst of going through her mother's things, she discovers a hidden diary - and a window onto stories buried long ago.
As Ellie and Hutch start speaking for the first time in years, Ellie's closed heart slowly begins to open. Fighting their feelings, they set out together to dig into Lillian's history. Using both the diary and a trip to the Summer House, a mysterious and seductive bayside home, they gamble that they can work together and not fall in love again. But in piecing together a decades-old unrequited-love story, they just might uncover the secrets in their own hearts...
Drifting Into Darien: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River by Janisse Ray
University of Georgia Press, September 2011
Janisse Ray was a babe in arms when a boat of her father's construction cracked open and went down in the mighty Altamaha River. Tucked in a life preserver, she washed onto a sandbar as the craft sank from view. That first baptism began a lifelong relationship with a stunning and powerful river that almost nobody knows.
The Altamaha rises dark and mysterious in southeast Georgia. It is deep and wide, bordered by swamps. Its corridor contains an extraordinary biodi-versity, including many rare and endangered species, which led the Nature Conservancy to designate it as one of the world's last great places.
The Altamaha is Ray's river, and from childhood she dreamed of paddling its entire length to where it empties into the sea. Drifting into Darien begins with an account of finally making that journey, turning to medita-tions on the many ways we accept a world that contains both good and evil. With praise, biting satire, and hope, Ray contemplates transformation and attempts with every page to settle peacefully into the now.
Though commemorating a history that includes logging, Ray celebrates "a culture that sprang from the flatwoods, which required a judicious use of nature." She looks in vain for an ivorybill woodpecker but is equally eager to see any of the imperiled species found in the river basin: spiny mussel, American oystercatcher, Radford's mint, Alabama milkvine. The book explores both the need and the possibilities for conservation of the river and the surrounding forests and wetlands. As in her groundbreaking "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood," Ray writes an account of her beloved river that is both social history and natural history, understanding the two as inseparable, particularly in the rural corner of Georgia that she knows best. Ray goes looking for wisdom and finds a river.
The Happy Table of Eugene Walker: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink edited by Don Goodman and Thomas Head
University of North Carolina Press, October 2011
The book is a revelation to anyone interested in today's booming scene in vintage and artisanal drinks--from bourbon and juleps to champagne and punch--and a southern twist on America's culinary heritage. This cookbook includes more than 300 recipes featuring the use of spirits, as well as numerous asides, lovely short essays, and countless witticisms.
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans
by Kadir Nelson
Balzer & Bray, September 2011
The story of America and African Americans is a story of hope and inspiration and unwavering courage. But it is also the story of injustice; of a country divided by law, education, and wealth; of a people whose struggles and achievements helped define their country.
Kadir Nelson, one of this generation's most accomplished, award-winning artists, has created an epic yet intimate introduction to the history of America and African Americans, from colonial days through the civil rights movement. Written in the voice of an "Everywoman," an unnamed narrator whose forebears came to this country on slave ships and who lived to cast her vote for the first African American president, "Heart and Soul" touches on some of the great transformative events and small victories of that history. This inspiring book demonstrates that in gaining their freedom and equal rights, African Americans helped our country achieve its promise of liberty and justice--the true heart and soul of this nation.
The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe
Tor Books, September 2011
No one knows where the Tufa came from, or how they ended up in the mountains of East Tennessee. When the first Europeans came to the Smoky Mountains, the Tufa were already there. Dark-haired and enigmatic, they live quietly in the hills and valleys of Cloud County, their origins lost to history. But there are clues in their music, hidden in the songs they have passed down for generations. . . .
Private Bronwyn Hyatt, a true daughter of the Tufa, has returned from Iraq, wounded in body and spirit, but her troubles are far from over. Cryptic omens warn of impending tragedy, while a restless "haint" has followed her home from the war. Worse yet, Bronwyn has lost touch with herself and with the music that was once a part of her. With death stalking her family, will she ever again join in the song of her people, and let it lift her onto the night winds?
Lions of the West by Robert Morgan
Shannon Ravenel Books, October 2011
From Thomas Jefferson's birth in 1743 to the California Gold rush in 1849, America's Manifest Destiny comes to life in Morgan 's skilled hands. Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary, dreamed that the U.S. would stretch across the continent. The account of how that dream became reality unfolds in the stories of Jefferson and nine other Americans whose adventurous spirits and lust for land pushed the westward boundaries.
Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir by Terry Helwig
Howard Books, October 2011
Helwig has written a captivating memoir of a young girl forced by her mother's instability to care for her siblings. A moving and motivating portrait of love and perseverance, "Moonlight on Linoleum" is a poignant tribute to the bonds of family and the tenacity of love.
Waking by Ron Rash Hub City Press, October 2011
Long live Ron Rash the storyteller, but heres the news. Ron Rash the poet is back and giving us poems that are both the river stones and the water making them shine. If allowed only two words for this wonderful poet, they would have to be clear and lithe.
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl: Observations on Life from the Shallow End of the Pool by Celia Rivenbark
St. Martins Press, August 2011
From the bestselling, award-winning author of "You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning" comes another collection of hilarious observations that are sure to resonate with women, mothers, and girlfriends everywhere.
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Okra Picks: Great books, fresh off the vine! Harvested for you with care by Southern Indie Booksellers. Click on the excerpt links to download a first chapter, or pick up your Okra Picks cards at a southern indie bookstore near you! Click on the tab above to see the full list. |
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