Are you looking for an unusual gift? Consider supporting the wonderful books from small presses, university presses, independent presses, and self-published books. This list is far from exhaustive, and it is not meant to suggest that commercial presses are not also publishing great work, but here is one place to explore some books that may not have received the recognition they deserve. Each book has a recommendation or commentary, and if there is no citation,, the note is from Meredith Sue Willis.
TheIris Publishing Group, Inc. (Iris Press and Tellico Books) has been run by Robert Cumming for more than ten years and publishes poets and writers like George Scarbrough, Ron Rash,Cathy Smith Bowers, and Jon Manchip White. Their most recent books are a novel and a collection of poetry by the famous Southern poet George Scarbrough. They often do both paperback and hardcover editions. Their toll-free phone number is 800-881-2119.
New and Recommended
Mitch Levenberg— PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY AND OTHER CONSTANTS is a collection of short stories that surprise and delight. Reading this weird and wonderful collection is sometimes like stepping into a surrealist painting and sometimes like being too close for comfort to real life. Many of the stories are about relationships in trouble, often with a woman with a strange name: "Alaska," "Dyspnea." Some take frightening urban situations (a home invasion, a knife point robbery) and give them a masterful twist. Sometimes this works both to make the events like a terrifying dream in which the dreamer/protagonist is nearly catatonic, and to make them funny. How does he do that? Terror and humor, unrealistic and yet it's as if it happened to you? You don't sit down and read the book front to back in a big gulp. Nor do you precisely savor it- the stories are too acerbic for savoring- but each foray into Levenberg's world of uncertainty and other constants is invigorating and engrossing.
Johnny Sundstrom— DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT is a novel that is a paean to the ways of the West– the real, contemporary West. It eschews movie-style macho confrontations, rather circling around its events with a far more realistic kind of tension and excitement. The pivotal event, foretold from early on, is that an important character is going to die young. Yet, when the death happens, it is both shocking and extremely moving. It is an accidental death, typical of the hard life of Wyoming ranchers but no less monumental for the future of the individual's family. The foreground story is about the love between a teenage boy descendent of one of the old time white families and a Northern Arapaho girl. In this case, the sins of the boy's ancestors, which he has barely heard of, turn out to be fully alive among the historians of the girl's tribe. How this is worked out is romantic and satisfying. Sundstrom also does a great job making the daily working life of his characters come alive. All this wealth of detail is told gracefully and with lots of intrinsic drama-- a rich portrait of the contemporary West.
Valerie Nieman— BLOOD CLAY, a highly realistic story about people you feel you could know and be friends with. They get caught up in unexpected, gripping, and horrific events. Something very unusual and ugly happens early on, and the novel is about the repercussions of this event, and how the main character tries to live with what she has witnessed. Things small and large are seen in perspective in this apotheosis of everyday people living ordinary lives– which means lives full of discovery, love, anger, violence, struggle, cowardice, failure and hope. What is unusual and deeply satisfying here is the insistence on how the story goes on and we keep on, living through our failures, facing our fears, reaching for one another. Valerie Nieman's website is here.
Bert Murray —Colin Preston Rocked and Rolled from CreateSpace is a lustily tormented story of first love and heartbreak.
It's September 1985 in the bosky precincts of Elerby University (though it conveys the intimacy of a small liberal arts college) in upstate New York. Colin is entering his sophomore year with a lousy love life and a lousy relationship with his father, but he does have a good friend in Karl (a handsome natural athlete who has a way with women) and in the Beatles.... Yes, the Beatles do offer the solace of shared experience, of meaning and even a little direction, but it is Colin's slowly gathering circle of friends—a very human society of odd fellows, including a dorm-cellar-dwelling delusional, a dark and mysterious Spanish professor on the run from her demons, big-hearted Big Ty and sweet Liz—who help illuminate the road ahead. Some of the sex scenes carry informational overload, but even then it is more humorous than cringing, perhaps even another epiphany that Colin collects: "There was no disappointment with Twinkies. You knew exactly what you were getting. Unlike Jasmine. Unlike love. Unlike life." A coming-of-age story with plenty of sting, where love is not only blind, but it blindsides. -- Kirkus Reviews
Michael Harris—The Chieu Hoi Saloon
Protagonist Harry Hudson is a broken man. And a stutter. Probably an alcoholic. Maybe a sex addict. But it's his stuttering that reminds the reader of Harry's pain. The stuttering is on the page, typographically displayed in a sort of dialect. It drives Harry's relationships with other characters, as they finish sentences for him or recommend behavioral clinics where he might find treatment and avoid losing his job on the fictional Clarion copy desk.... His job gives Harry regular pay, which finances a descent into non-gentrified early 90's scenes: the midnight streets of Long Beach and the poorly lit interiors of May's Chieu Hoi bar, swingers clubs, porno theaters, and residential motels. In the night world of LA Harry finds surrogate if sometimes exploitative families: May's actual and barroom families and Kelly's mostly criminal family. These unconventional homes give Harry an odd direction in life--a type of voice--and help him muster the courage to initiate a return to Oregon to raise the son he doesn't know. If there's any salvation in Harry's live and the lives of the novel's other characters, it resides in these patched-together families, in trying to be fathers and mothers and children, perhaps not necessarily good ones, but ones who have enough conviction nonetheless to believe that they must try.
-- Roger Wall
Reamy Jansen — Available Light: Recollections and Reflections of a Son. Let me begin by recommending a small press memoir collection, Reamy Jansen’s Available Light: Recollections and Reflections of a Son. What is most striking about the book, however, is that it manages with delicacy to treat with a surprisingly light touch material that is both extremely serious and painful– an alcoholic mother, a distant father, the death of both of them, threatened eyesight to the narrator, a family with members living essentially alone while together. I don’t mean that Jansen makes light of what is serious, but rather that he handles his stories in the way we are told to handle tender dough– gently, quickly, expertly. Jansen manages, for example, to present his mother’s frantic anti-Semitism in a perfect mix of light and dark, shocking and familiar, close and far, painfully sharp and almost lilting. How does he do that?
I think there is an element of grace here, both grace in its particular Christian usage of freely given and also in our everyday use of the word “graceful” to mean effortless charm and beauty in movement. Jansen’s book then is a memoir with a great deal of grace both in the writing style and in the attitudes toward the deeply flawed people in his past.
Marie Manilla-- Still Life with Plums (short stories). "Any reader who cares about mature, intelligent, graceful storytelling should be thinking very seriously about getting Still Life with Plums into their life--buy it, download it, check it out of the library--whatever it takes to be able to read and savor and learn from Marie Manilla's fine and resonant stories." More information at West Virginia University Press.
-- Richard Currey, author of Fatal Light and Lost Highway
A Selection of Small Presses:
Bottom Dog Press specializes in midwestern and working class literature.
Blair Mountain Press is a small press feautring Appalachian writers, especially work that relates to the region and to the environment. They just celebrated their tenth anniversary.
The Feminist Press has been publishing for over 36 years with a focus on lost classics by women and writing by women overseas. They have new books about Iraq and Somalia as well as classics by Paule Marshall, Alice Childress, and dozens more. One of the best and oldest.
Glad Day Books, founded by Grace Paley and Robert Nichols, has published only a handful of books, but all worth reading, and all both political and literary. Pale and Nichols say they have " always shared a particular attitude as writers. Both of us are in the political world at the same time both of us are in the literary world. In fact, neither of us bothers about the distinction. It is not natural."
Gnomon Press publishes beautiful editions of poetry and prose with some emphasis on Appalachia, but not entirely. P.O. Box 475,
Frankfort, KY 40602-0475
Hamilton Stone Editionsis one press that needs a little truth-in-advertising. This small cooperative press has several of my books in print, including my Blair Morgan trilogy and a book of short stories, but it also publishes wonderful fiction by Edith Konecky, Rebecca Kavaler, Lynda Schor, Nathan Leslie, Eva Kollisch, Jane Lazarre, Rochelle Ratner, and Carole Rosenthal plus poetry by Halvard Johnson and James Cervantes. Please take a look at http://hamiltonstone.org .
Hanging Loose Press has been publishing for more than thirty years. Look at their website at http://www.hangingloosepress.com . 2007- 2008 catalog includes books by Sherman Alexie, Jayne Cortez, Elizabeth Swados, Joan Larkin, Charles North, Hettie Jones, Paul Violi, Terence Winch, Bill Zavatsky, Steve Schrader and many more.
TheIris Publishing Group, Inc. (Iris Press and Tellico Books) has been run by Robert Cumming for more than ten years and publishes poets and writers like George Scarbrough, Ron Rash,Cathy Smith Bowers, and Jon Manchip White. Their most recent books are a novel and a collection of poetry by the famous Southern poet George Scarbrough. They often do both paperback and hardcover editions. Their toll-free phone number is 800-881-2119.
The Jesse Stuart Foundation is more than a press--it's a regional institution, but the list of authors includes Robert Penn Warren, George Ella Lyon, and Loretta Lynn, among many, many others.
Marsh Hawk Press is a high quality mostly-poetry press committed especially to publishing poetry that has an affinity to the visual arts. The artistic advisory board includes Toi Derricotte, Marilyn Hacker, Allan Kornblum, Alicia Ostriker, David Shapiro, John Yau, and Anne Waldman. If you click here, you can learn about a special offer for a standing order with a 40% discount.
Motes Books focuses on Appalachian books and education books and has interesting anthologies as well as books by individual authors.
Mountain State Press promotes writing in West Virginia by publishing literary works of all genres written by West Virginians or about the state.
Ohio University Press is a full service scholarly press with literary and other imprints.
PM Pressseeks to create radical and stimulating fiction and non-fiction books, pamphlets, t-shirts, visual and audio materials to entertain, educate, and inspire.
Poets Wear Prada is a poetry publishing house with excellent poets and affordable books with beautiful covers.The website is http://poetswearpradanj.home.att.net/. Their snail mail location for author inquiries and mail orders is POETS WEAR PRADA, c/o Roxanne Hoffman, 533 Bloomfield Street, 2nd Floor, Hoboken, NJ 07030.
Tachyon Publications is a small science fiction press that publishes wonderful books by people like Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, Mary Shelley, and James Tiptree, Jr. Don't miss Carol Emshwiller's new novel, The Secret City.
Trillium Publishers-- books about West Virginia by Norman Julian, Russell Marano, and Mary Lucille Deberry.
Toby Press , both small and commercial, specializes in excellent new fiction and inexpensive, readable editions of old books.
West Virginia University Press's Vandalia imprint has several excellent fiction and nonfiction titles, including books by Richard Currey, Lee Maynard's classic Crum (and the sequel Screaming with the Cannibals) as well as Surviving Mae West and my novel Oradell at Sea. The website is here.
Wind Press is at http://windpub.com . Charlie Hughes publishes some wonderful poetry of the Appalachian region including Rita Quillen's latest.
Belinda Anderson— The Bingo Cheaters. Short Stories. Whether the character is a damaged little boy with a penchant for lighting matches, an elderly bingo player whose friends cheat, or a blind teen-age entrepreneur, Belinda Anderson creates people who struggle heroically and sometimes humorously with the large and small obstacles of life. This is Belinda Anderson's second collection. For information about it and her first book, The Well Ain't Dry Yet, see the web site of Mountain State Press or else click here.
Belinda Anderson-- Buckle Up, Buttercup (Mountain State Press). A novel in stories. "With warmth and charm, Belinda Anderson creates a world that lingers long after the last page. Her characters aren't afraid to take up residence in the reader's mind and stay there; they are as real and recognizable as the flesh-and-blood people we know and love."
-- Gretchen Moran Laskas, author of The Midwife's Tale.
Alan Appel-- The Hebrew Tutor of Bel Air (Coffee House Press). Ian Richard Jones writes in Chicago Life " This book is perfect for fans of voice-driven literature—an enjoyable read that will stick in your mind long after you close the book"
Peggy Backman -- Did That Really Happen? (Driftwood Press ). These stories pull us under and leave us doubting what others might all reality.
-- Dee LaDuke
Tamara Baxter-- ROCK BIG AND SING LOUD: SHORT STORIES FROM SOUTHERN APPALACHIA (Jesse Stuart Foundation). “These stories take us to places we did not expect to go, and just when we think we have seen what is strangest, most absurd, most alien and outrageous, we recognize something of ourselves.” Commentary by Robert Morgan.
June Langford Berkley — Shannaganey Blue. Novella.
This novella by West Virginian native June Langford Berkley, gets Phyllis Moore’s vote as one of the best publications by a small press. First published in 1983 in The Akros Review, Spring, 1983, Number 7, the intriguing volume is now in its fifth printing. Never advertised, it has a loyal readership and has been used in classrooms. Shannaganey's protagonist Kate calls to mind another much loved fictional character, Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Each child tells a story as only a child can, a story set firmly in a place they know and love. Kate and Scout are the real deals, each speaks with an authentic, sometimes amusing, voice. Each tells the truth as they see it. Moore says, “I've read SHANNAGANEY's 47 tightly crafted pages many times. In case of a house fire, it's one of the books I'd rescue.” To order SHANNAGANEY BLUE readers may contact the author. Berkely.jberkley@columbus.rr.com . The cost is $5.00, and postage is included. Suggested by Phyllis Moore.
Marlen Suyapa Bodden-- The Wedding Gift is the story of complex relationships among enslaved people and the people who hold them in bondage during the decade before the Civil War. The novel is told in the alternating view points of Sarah Campbell, a light skinned young slave woman who learns reluctantly where her mother goes at night as well as how to read and write, and Theodora Allen, the white lady of the plantation who discovers that her husband is both the father of her own daughter and of Sarah. The novel has a powerful momentum that drives it forward: How badly will Mr. Allen treat the women in his life? How much evil will he perpetuate on his slaves? Who is the black father of a certain young white woman’s child? Who will live and who will die? Will Sarah be able to use her intelligence and skills at last to make a run?
Susan Carpenter—Riders On the Storm from Bottom Dog Press. "Near-documentarian style as well as absolutely believable characters makes her fine new novel, RIDERS ON THE STORM a deeply rewarding experience. While relating the tumultuous events of 1968, she nails down the convergence of historical events, both national and international, that produced the Movement, fed it, and then finally splintered it into rival competing groups...This book is no fabrication but a fictional recreation by one who was there."
-- Ed Davis (for the full review, click here.)
RIDERS ON THE STORM can be ordered for $18 from Bottom Dog Press (P.O. Box 425, Huron, OH 44839) or from their website at http://www.smithdocs.net.
June Corner complied EVERYDAY BLESSINGS: A Year of Inspiration, Comfort and Gratitude Compiled by (Source books, Inc., $11.99, ISBN 1-4022-0606-2) Available now at bookstores nationwide. For more information, visit www.junecotner.com. .
Paola Corso—Catina's Haircut from University of Wisconsin Press. This collection manages in just over a hundred pages to create a wonderful family epic, two nations, and two centuries. It moves from Calabria, Italy at the turn of the twentieth century to Pittsburgh in the industrial steel mill mid-twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century as well. Destructive drought and deadly flood waters alternate as Corso’s characters try to understand their new world and their old one. She’s especially good at the play between tales and fables and a brilliantly solid, earthbound realism: a literary rendering of a family’s story and its soul.
Barbara Crooker — MORE! Poetry collection from C&R Press. Says the publisher: "
Whether writing about her son with autism, her daughter's traumatic brain injury, her mother's slow decline, paintings by Matisse and Kahlo, Crooker grounds her work in the everyday moment. Divided into four sections with each exploring a different aspect of the word 'more,' these are poems of grace and gratitude that show 'all of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light.'" More information at http://www.wix.com/crpress/crpress .
Richard Currey —Lost Highway . A new edition of the novel from West Virginian University's Vandalia Press: call 1-800-WVUPRESS or go to http://www.wvupress.com. .
Ed Davis — Healing Arts .Chapbook of poetry from Pudding House Publications (http://www.puddinghouse.com). He is also the author of the novel I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN. .
Ed Davis— The Measure of Everything . Novel. This is an American novel that takes grassroots political action seriously. It captures how a political movement can develop and even succeed. The novel culminates in the auction of the farm, a public event that both fulfills plot expectations and uplifts the reader without any sugar coating. To find out more about this onw and other books by Davis, click on http://www.davised.com/.
Cheryl Denise — I Saw God Dancing. Poems. This is my idea of religious poems: an embrace and celebration of this life, including husbands and sheep and crazy ladies and shoo-fly pie. The poet is a Mennonite, and her earthy love of life is enormously uplifting. Learn more about the book at Cascadia Publishing .
Joyce Dyer — Gum-Dipped: A Daughter Remembers Rubber Town. Memoir.
This is a striking memoir of a family, a man's unrequited love for a Company, and some of the history of Akron, Ohio and its relationship to the Firestone Tire Company. From the University of Akron Press. .
Pamela Erens--The Understory (Ironweed Press, Inc.). A short novel, about a man named Jack who is one of the quiet people slipping around the streets of New York City. It is an interior, precise, and carefully imagined novel that make a powerful social statement in its oblique focused way.
Carol Emshwiller — I Live With You. Science Fiction.
For anymore who
reads Kafka or literary science fiction or general literature,
I cannot recommend highly enough Carol Emshwiller's I LIVE WITH
YOU from the small science fiction press Tachyon (web site at http://www.tachyonpublications.com.)
Some of Emswhiller's stories are stunners: she has a whole set
of war stories in which people have forgotten why they started
fighting, and my favorite is a love story called "The General."
Another love story about attraction across species (sort of)
, is "Gliders Though They Be," in which strange gopher-like
creatures, some pink with wings, some blue with no wings, live
in constant danger from "the sky people" who snatch the occasional
exposed child or adult. Emswhiller's world moves in and out
among locations in science fiction, modernist experimentation,
and the wide, wild blue yonder of her rich, quirky inidual
imagination.
Carol Emswhiller also has a new novel, The Secret City, from Tachyon Publications the small science fiction press. In this one, a group of extremely human aliens who came as tourists have been abandoned on this planet. The older generation dies off, and the younger ones have to decide if they want to stay or go. Even if you aren't a science fiction fan, you'll enjoy the gripping quirky worlds Emswhiller creates.
Fred First—Slow Road Home: A Blue Ridge Book of Days. Memoir, Nature. Fred First, biologist and naturalist, has collected the best of his newspaper column and blog about his life on a small property in Floyd County, Virginia. He and his wife chose this property in this location after much thought, and his life in these southwestern Virginia mountains is a conscious, indeed ideological choice– that is to say, he is attempting to live in a way that is exemplary and instructive to others. He believes that it is a good thing to garden in the summer and a good thing to chop wood and tend the wood stove in the winter. In particular, he believes that a meditative observation of nature is a good thing, and some of his paragraphs of description are as powerful as any I’ve ever read about nature. For more on SLOW ROAD HOME, including excerpts and how to order, go to http://goosecreekpress.pbwiki.com/FrontPage. .
Women Without Superstition: No Gods-- No Masters--The Collected Writings of Women Freethinkers of the Nineteenth & Twentieth Century. Edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor.
This book makes a great gift for young women or anyone. It contains daring and pioneering thinkers who women can be proud of intelligent and humanistic role models, including Susan B. Anthony, Mary Wollstonecraft, Harriet Martineau, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Wright, Meridel LeSueur, Barbara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollitt, and numerous other women who were free thinking liberators of not only women, but all oppressed peoples.
Order for $25 postpaid from The Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 750, Madision, WI. 53701. (608) 256-8900. http://www.ffrf.org/books . Suggested by Daniela Gioseffi.
Louise T. Gantress — Bitter Tea. “With Bitter Tea, Louise T. Gantress has produced a vivid, memorable and realistic portrait of Japan during the boom years of the 1980s. The oddities and delusions of those days made an indelible impression on those who witnessed them, and this book brings all the details back to life.” Praised by James Fallows.
Ardian Gill —The River is Mine .
An excellent
gift book for a reader with an interest in American history
and/or adventure would be Ardian Gill's fast moving and carefully
researched historical novel THE RIVER IS MINE, based on John
Wesley Powell's exploration of the Colorado river. Learn more
at the publisher, Local Color Press and here. Also see an article in UConn Magazine..
Joanne Greenberg— Appearances. Novel. A novel that made me cry. It is published by Montemayor Press, which (truth in advertising!) has also published and reprinted work of mine. It is an uplifting story with mostly good people in it. It is also full of interesting information about everything from the practice of ski law to wedding planning. The characters in the novel have real jobs and generally enjoy their work. I can imagine someone calling it a novel with a message or even a didactic novel, but it seems to be that the kind of graceful teaching going on here is as legitimate in fiction as any of the other things fiction does, like building suspense, sharing intense sensual experiences, or exploring the rhythms of common language. The heart of the story is a father hunt. The main character, the ski lawyer, discovers that his father is not dead, and is, indeed (– warning! Plot spoiler coming – ) in prison for child molesting. I think that a lot of people will find the empathy for the child molester difficult, but Greenberg handles this with great aplomb and a kind of bare honesty that I found really moving..
Joanne Greenberg—A SEASON OF DELIGHT. Novel.
Yes, that Joanne Greenberg--of I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROSE GARDEN fame. She is still writing, interesting, excellent novels, a reprint here from Montemayor Press of an interesting story of a middle aged woman who volunteers on an EMT ambulance, and her relationship with a much younger man.
Joanne Greenberg’s Miri Who Charms is a novel that feels as real as a memoir. The heart of this story is a relationship between two girls who become women in the story. One of them is the type of person who draws the rest of us toward them, who “charm, “ as Greenberg would have it. In my life, I have tended to keep a distance from them; but the narrator here, Rachel, is so deep in Miri’s life that she seems to live for her and her daughter rather than for herself. Miri is totally believable as a charmer, but she is also a monster of selflishness, and her precocious, hot house flower of a daughter has some of the same qualities. The story is largely about the narrator's struggle in this relationship, but also about the relationships of both women to the community they have rejected: the Orthodox Jews of Colorado. It’s a lovely, worthwhile story– and you have to wonder: why isn’t Greenberg’s work being reviewed and read more widely?
Patricia Grossman— Brian in Three Seasons . "I'd like to bring to your attention a book published by the 25-year-old small press,
The Permanent Press—Brian in Three Seasons, by Patricia Grossman. It just won the
2006 Ferro-Grumley Award in the women writer's category— rather an unusual situation since it is told in the first-person point of view of a middle-aged gay man. It is a very convincing rendering and highly
sympathetic to all its characters—Brian's midwestern family, his friends and created
family in NYC, where he barely gets by teaching one art history course and tending
bar. During the course of the novel, Brian's life opens up in unexpected ways.
Beautifully written. " Suggested by Helene Kendler.
Jimmy Carl Harris—Wounds that Bind . To read this book of short fiction is to think of Flannery O’Connor, who was known for her ability to write powerful tales of truth and terror that cut to the core of being uniquely human, often flawed, and in need of grace. Commentary by Sue Walker
Michael Harris—The Chieu Hoi Saloon
Protagonist Harry Hudson is a broken man. And a stutter. Probably an alcoholic. Maybe a sex addict. But it's his stuttering that reminds the reader of Harry's pain. The stuttering is on the page, typographically displayed in a sort of dialect. It drives Harry's relationships with other characters, as they finish sentences for him or recommend behavioral clinics where he might find treatment and avoid losing his job on the fictional Clarion copy desk.... His job gives Harry regular pay, which finances a descent into non-gentrified early 90's scenes: the midnight streets of Long Beach and the poorly lit interiors of May's Chieu Hoi bar, swingers clubs, porno theaters, and residential motels. In the night world of LA Harry finds surrogate if sometimes exploitative families: May's actual and barroom families and Kelly's mostly criminal family. These unconventional homes give Harry an odd direction in life--a type of voice--and help him muster the courage to initiate a return to Oregon to raise the son he doesn't know. If there's any salvation in Harry's live and the lives of the novel's other characters, it resides in these patched-together families, in trying to be fathers and mothers and children, perhaps not necessarily good ones, but ones who have enough conviction nonetheless to believe that they must try.
-- Roger Wall
Jane Hicks— BLOOD AND BONE REMEMBER: POEMS FROM APPALACHIA. Poems from the Jesse Stuart Foundation has been nominated for Appalachian Poetry Book of the Year by the Appalachian Wirters Association and for the Weatherford Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association.
Reamy Jansen — AVAILABLE LIGHT: RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS OF A SON.Let me begin by recommending a small press memoir collection, Reamy Jansen’s Available Light: Recollections and Reflections of a Son. What is most striking about the book, however, is that it manages with delicacy to treat with a surprisingly light touch material that is both extremely serious and painful– an alcoholic mother, a distant father, the death of both of them, threatened eyesight to the narrator, a family with members living essentially alone while together. I don’t mean that Jansen makes light of what is serious, but rather that he handles his stories in the way we are told to handle tender dough– gently, quickly, expertly. Jansen manages, for example, to present his mother’s frantic anti-Semitism in a perfect mix of light and dark, shocking and familiar, close and far, painfully sharp and almost lilting. How does he do that?
I think there is an element of grace here, both grace in its particular Christian usage of freely given and also in our everyday use of the word “graceful” to mean effortless charm and beauty in movement. Jansen’s book then is a memoir with a great deal of grace both in the writing style and in the attitudes toward the deeply flawed people in his past.
Mark Kaminsky-- Shadow Traffic. This wonderful book includes personal essay, criticism, poetry, and fiction. Kaminsky is a poet, essayist, editor, psychotherapist, and well-known worker with life narrative and the elderly. The themes include aftermath– the aftermath of the Holocaust, the aftermath of the Soviet Union, and the aftermath of family trauma, some related to Holocaust survival and some not– but it is also about the way writers past and present support other writers. it is also about insomnia and ambition and married love. Reading the book is like having an amazing, far-reaching conversation without ever becoming tired. Like the best conversation, it is deeply of the heart and of the mind at once, and you are swept through all the subjects by the play of an engaged mind and personality. This is from Red Hen Press.
Jorge I. Klainman (translated by Kal Wagenheim)-- The Seventh Miracle. A memoir of a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. I heard the translator Kal Wagenheim speak about this story of a fifteen-year-old Jewish boy who was marked for death by a psychopathic camp commandant, but survived through help of many to come to adulthood in Argentina. Look for this one on Amazon .
Eva Kollisch—GIRL IN MOVEMENT. Memoir. A young woman's story set in the United States where no battles take place. The author, a retired professor of German language and literature, came to the U.S. as a teenager fleeing Hitler. In a search of belonging and rational understanding of the world, she joined a small left-wing political party and spent the war years experimenting with Marxism, factory work, making love, getting married, running away, and learning about the limits and depths of friendship.
Eva Kollisch-- The Ground Under My Feet is a fascinating mix of fiction and memoir about her personal past and the past of Austria. The situation is that a middle-class, intellectual, secular Jewish family is living outside of Vienna just before the Second World War. The mother is a poet in the German language and a lover of German culture. After all, this is her native land. But Hitler annexes Austria, and all Jews are at terrible risk, and the family flees. Eva and her two brothers escape on the famous kindertransport to England and then eventually to the U.S. Her mother is the last out, and comes very close to not making it. From Hamilton Stone Editions.
Edith Konecky—View to the North. Novel. Edith
Konecky's best known book, in print for twenty years, is Allegra Maud Goldman , but this new novel from Hamilton Stone Editions was praised by MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW as "... a woman's life journey from youth to middle age, and her experiences as a wife, mother, and lover. The narrative alternates between moments of 'then,' times past, and moments of 'now,' living in the present, and confronting the future. Bisexual themes as well as the universal conflicts and self-reflections of a parent watching her children grow up and grow more distant add a poignantly human tone to this introspective story." That review does not, by the way, capture how funny it is-- for a sample, go to http://www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr4fiction.html#konecky.
Jane Lazarre-- Someplace Quite Unknown is, says Marnie Mueller, "A contemporary classic." Jaime Manrique says that Lazarre "probes with an admirable rigor and dazzling artistry, the deepest places of a woman's heart. This is a powerful and original work." Lazarre's previous works include The Mother Knot; Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons; and The Powers of Charlotte.
Mitch Levenberg— PRINCIPLES OF UNCERTAINTY AND OTHER CONSTANTS is a collection of short stories that surprise and delight. Reading this weird and wonderful collection is sometimes like stepping into a surrealist painting and sometimes like being too close for comfort to real life. Many of the stories are about relationships in trouble, often with a woman with a strange name: "Alaska," "Dyspnea." Some take frightening urban situations (a home invasion, a knife point robbery) and give them a masterful twist. Sometimes this works both to make the events like a terrifying dream in which the dreamer/protagonist is nearly catatonic, and to make them funny. How does he do that? Terror and humor, unrealistic and yet it's as if it happened to you? You don't sit down and read the book front to back in a big gulp. Nor do you precisely savor it- the stories are too acerbic for savoring- but each foray into Levenberg's world of uncertainty and other constants is invigorating and engrossing.
Marie Manilla-- Still Life with Plums (short stories). "Any reader who cares about mature, intelligent, graceful storytelling should be thinking very seriously about getting Still Life with Plums into their life--buy it, download it, check it out of the library--whatever it takes to be able to read and savor and learn from Marie Manilla's fine and resonant stories." More information at West Virginia University Press.
-- Richard Currey, author of Fatal Light and Lost Highway
Jeff Mann— Loving Mountains, Loving Men Jeff Mann is an excellent poet who is also perhaps the first self identified literary gay mountain man. The book does a wonderful job of delineating one man’s precise place in the world. It includes how he learns about his Celtic and German ancestors as well as tales of his colorful southern West Virginia family, but it also explores a subculture of often isolated gay and Lesbian people in Appalachia--who, when they do get together, are supportive of each other and have a lot of fun. There are also harrowing stories of suffering adolescence and a number of really powerful poems punctuating the prose pieces. It's an unusually personal and gripping book.
Lee Maynard-- The Pale Light of Sunset. Maynard writes better than anyone I know about how a boy is infused with the rules of American manhood. Maynard calls his new book a fictional memoir– a kind of heightened and imagined life that Maynard describes in the subtitle as “Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life.” Organized chronologically from 1936 to 2005, it is a series of beautifully written short narratives. They begin with the story teller as a free-ranging boy in the mountains; he is then transplanted for a time to the mean streets of Baltimore, Maryland; then he is back in Crum, West Virginia– the scene and title of his extraordinary first novel. Many of the pieces here are about the boy and then man pitted against nature– sometimes inadvertently as in the horrific incident with the hornets (yes, it’s as bad as you can imagine), and then, as the narrator gets older, he sets the physical challenges himself. He braves trial by snow, desert, ocean water, and storm– and these are the bracing, honest struggles. The really ugly stuff (excluding those hornets) comes with his run-ins with various human low-lifes. For a full length review, take a look at what Phyllis Moore wrote in APPALACHIAN HERITAGELee Maynard-- The Pale Light of Sunset. Maynard writes better than anyone I know about how a boy is infused with the rules of American manhood. Maynard calls his new book a fictional memoir– a kind of heightened and imagined life that Maynard describes in the subtitle as “Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life.” Organized chronologically from 1936 to 2005, it is a series of beautifully written short narratives. They begin with the story teller as a free-ranging boy in the mountains; he is then transplanted for a time to the mean streets of Baltimore, Maryland; then he is back in Crum, West Virginia– the scene and title of his extraordinary first novel. Many of the pieces here are about the boy and then man pitted against nature– sometimes inadvertently as in the horrific incident with the hornets (yes, it’s as bad as you can imagine), and then, as the narrator gets older, he sets the physical challenges himself. He braves trial by snow, desert, ocean water, and storm– and these are the bracing, honest struggles. The really ugly stuff (excluding those hornets) comes with his run-ins with various human low-lifes. For a full length review, take a look at what Phyllis Moore wrote in Appalachian Heritage
John McKernan— Resurrection of the Dust. Poems. (ABZ Press) “John McKernan is the master of a sly surrealism that reveals the numinous inside the ordinary or the terrible that sleeps peacefully inside the mundane. With the twist of a quiet perception or the flick of a metaphor, he shows us the true terms of our being: frightening and glorious in equal parts.” Commentary by Gregory Orr.
Irene McKinney — SIX O'CLOCK MINE REPORT. Poems.
The University of Pittsburgh publishes this
fine collection by the poet laureate of West Virginia.
Judith Moffett-- The Bird Shaman is the long-awaited last novel of Judith Moffett’s science fiction Holy Ground trilogy, but you don’t need to have read the first books to read it. The novel is set in the final year of the human opportunity to change their ways before a ban on having children is made permanent.
Bert Murray —Colin Preston Rocked and Rolled from CreateSpace is a lustily tormented story of first love and heartbreak.
It's September 1985 in the bosky precincts of Elerby University (though it conveys the intimacy of a small liberal arts college) in upstate New York. Colin is entering his sophomore year with a lousy love life and a lousy relationship with his father, but he does have a good friend in Karl (a handsome natural athlete who has a way with women) and in the Beatles.... Yes, the Beatles do offer the solace of shared experience, of meaning and even a little direction, but it is Colin's slowly gathering circle of friends—a very human society of odd fellows, including a dorm-cellar-dwelling delusional, a dark and mysterious Spanish professor on the run from her demons, big-hearted Big Ty and sweet Liz—who help illuminate the road ahead. Some of the sex scenes carry informational overload, but even then it is more humorous than cringing, perhaps even another epiphany that Colin collects: "There was no disappointment with Twinkies. You knew exactly what you were getting. Unlike Jasmine. Unlike love. Unlike life." A coming-of-age story with plenty of sting, where love is not only blind, but it blindsides. -- Kirkus Reviews
Valerie Nieman— BLOOD CLAY, a highly realistic story about people you feel you could know and be friends with. They get caught up in unexpected, gripping, and horrific events. Something very unusual and ugly happens early on, and the novel is about the repercussions of this event, and how the main character tries to live with what she has witnessed. Things small and large are seen in perspective in this apotheosis of everyday people living ordinary lives– which means lives full of discovery, love, anger, violence, struggle, cowardice, failure and hope. What is unusual and deeply satisfying here is the insistence on how the story goes on and we keep on, living through our failures, facing our fears, reaching for one another. Valerie Nieman's website is here.
Valerie Nieman— Fidelities. Short stories called Fidelities is published
by Vandalia Press, an imprint of West Virginia University Press.
This book has a lot of emotional punch, and Jennifer Lynch's
review at GRAFITTI NEWSPAPER (http://www.grafwv.com/)
says, "No matter where you open Fidelities, a collection of
short stories by Valerie Nieman....it's full of intriguing people
[and] interesting puzzles that leave the reader wondering about
their complexities long after reading it.....Taken inidually,
each story looks at the life of characters so real and intricate,
I felt I knew someone just like many of them. Taken as a whole,
the collection is an interpretative look at the motivations,
loyalties and obligations of a group of ordinary iniduals.
" To learn more about Valerie Nieman, go to http://www.wvwc.edu/lib/wv_authors/authors/a_nieman.htm.
To buy the book, use the online booksellers or go to the Vandalia
press site at http://www.wvupress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=41&products_id=17.
Hilton Obenzinger-- Busy Dying is a memoir about a young man in those exhilarating rough late nineteen-sixties. Obenzinger sets his memoir of the 1968 Columbia University protests in the context of his growing up with an immigrant father’s powerful personality, with sad death of his brother and a friend, and the looming background of many relatives having died at Treblinka. Obenzinger was a junior at Columbia College at the time of the sit-ins, a member of the literary magazine circle, and one of the ones who appeared to me to be part of the in-crowd. His description of the events is carefully grounded in what he lived (he and his friends, for example, write some bad poetry while they’re sitting in, at the suggestion of their teacher, Kenneth Koch), but it also gives an excellent overview of what happened. The book, and Obenzinger’s growing up, go beyond the sit-ins to include a bizarre post-graduation road trip in a blue Thunderbird up the Alaskan highway with a crazy child molester. As they say, you can’t make this stuff up. The book is humorous, too, in a nicely twisted way– a clear a window into that time.
Miguel Antonio Ortiz-- King of Swords . At first glance, this appears to be a family saga with the satisfactions of nineteenth century fiction: an omniscient viewpoint, philosophical ruminations, explorations of the levels of a particular society, early twentieth century Puerto Rico, but it is in no way an old-fashioned novel, but rather something new and extremely original. The ending gives insight and meaning to the preceding pages, and also demonstrates one of the ideas the novel plays with– the impossibility of avoiding the past, which makes the present sometimes tragic but also precious.
The style contrasts leisurely description and narration with runs of crisp dialogue, almost minimalist in their untagged flow, and it is studded with surprising passages that are like extended metaphors grown into fables:
Ron Padgett—YOU NEVER KNOW. Poems. This is a beautiful book from Coffee House Press-- Ron Padgett often insightful, often funny, always surprising: "Medieval Salad e," "How to Become a Tree in Sweden," "A Prescription for a Happy Sort of Melancholy."
RIta Sims Quillen-- Her Secret Dream. Poems (http://windpub.com/books/secretdream.htm ). "I have admired Rita Quillen’s poetry for years, and this collection will have an honored place on my bookshelf....It is my hope that Her Secret Dream will find a well-deserved place on many, many bookshelves."
-- Commentary by Ron Rash
Barbara Riddle— The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke . Novel. Tthe headlong, entertaining coming of age of a young woman at the very opening of the nineteen-sixties. She tries everything at once: to be brilliant, to make love, to have relationships, to have adventures– and mainly, to find her footing in a shaky world.
"The Girl Pretending to Read Rilke is a rite-of-passage novella set in the hothouse atmosphere of cutting-edge molecular biology research in Boston, circa 1963- the 'last year of the Fifties.'"— Commentary by Randall Wilson. .
Priscillla A. Rodd— Surviving Mae West . Novel. I love novels that take me on a trip, and I love to be introduced to a world I don't know. This one does both. The trip is into the experience of a nineteen year old, full of life force and eager to examine her own experience. The world I don't know is the upscale brownstone brothels of New York City where young Tess, who comes from a dysfunctional family and has been the victim of a brutal acquaintance rape, makes her living. The details of her life as a hooker are entertaining, appalling-- and humorous. To order from the publisher, click here.
Robert Roth-- Health Proxy. It’s really pretty stunning– all about life in tiny gray apartments in the Village among people who were (and still are I suppose) cutting edge and political and full of talk. It is extremely gripping, that in-your-face quality of the ancient mariner stopping you and holding you with his extreme honesty. It’s the insistent scrupulousness with which he examines himself, his friends, and his failings that engaged me. I really couldn’t put it down.
Thaddeus Rutkowski— Tetched: A Novel in Fractals. This is an offbeat coming-of-age novel, a biracial narrator tells of growing up in rural America and later escaping to a new life in a city. It is called "tough and funny and touching and harrowing" by John Barth and Alison Lurie says that Rutkowski is one of the most original writers in America today." Click here to order from publisher Behler.
Greg Sanders-- Motel Girl. Greg Sanders' Motel Girl, a first collection of short stories from Red Hen Press sets up a slightly off-plumb world of sometimes-funny and sometimes anxious situations, often fraught with violence. The situation usually centers on a lonely guy, a bit of a loser, frequently living in the East Village. Some of the best stories are funny as well as sad, like “The Garage Door,” in which an unemployed suburban guy steals a garage door out of a quirky nostalgia for his childhood. In “At the Laundromat”a man finds an ad on the bulletin board and starts going to the therapist upstairs while his clothes spin. Other pieces are brilliantly, painfully dark, like the story of “L.,” whose girlfriend has left him during a New York City black-out. This story has a surprise ending that is amply earned. Another of my favorites is the title story, “Motel Girl,” an exploration of what rape would be like from a woman to a man. In all of the stories, there are surprises and a nicely astringent fictional experience.
Lynda Schor-- The Body Parts Shope. Stories.
"Lynda Schor is the type of writer who knows how to dig through the detritus of American culture and find gold. Although there have been far too few, her story collections are filled with the type of sardonic wit and absurdist scenarios rarely found in a mainstream American fiction limited by its pragmatic matter-of-factness and coy ironic nudgings. Her third collection, The Body Parts Shop, is the work of a master of the short story form." -- Travis Jeppesen (Read more here) .
Steven Schrader -- What We Deserved: Stories From a New York Life . Stories. Steven Schrader is an old friend of mine, an early director of Teachers and Writers Collaborative and a sharply humorous story writer. For information about the book, go to http://www.hangingloosepress.com .
Charles Swanson-- Two books of poetry: After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalms from Motes Books and Farm Life and Legend from Finishing Line Press. "A life remembered and other lives imagined are Charles Swanson’s subjects in this fine collection of poems, and he has rendered both with exceptional vividness and, in the imagined lives, exceptional empathy—and, always, an abiding love of his home country."
-- Ron Rash
Iris N. Schwartz (and Madeline Artenberg) — Awakened. Poems by two poets, both active members of the New York poetry reading and publishing circuit. Poems with lots of insight, uplifting personal manifestos, and wonderful created character monologues. Marilyn Jaye Lewis says, " Overall, Awakened is a slim volume, but the poems contained within it are so packed with imagery, emotion, with visual segues into the harrowing past, as well as back into a palpable present, that I came away from this book feeling as if I'd really explored these women's lives." For the full review, click here. Published by Rogue Scholars Press.
Myra Shapiro's memoir Four Sublets: Becoming a Poet in New York from Chicory Blue Press " is about a woman who moves to New York in middle age from her home in Chatanooga to study poetry and make a life as a poet for herself in the city she's longed for, and about how her marriage makes this transition with her. It's a good depiction of contemporary attitudes– the celebration of individual growth, the delight in its nuances. The best single scene was the death of her sister-in-law.” -- Ingrid Hughes
Leora Skolkin-Smith 's Edges: O Israel O Palestine from tiny Glad Day Press (founded by Grace Paley and Robert Nichols) is not a book that you lie back and sink into: it takes some concentration that is eminently worthwhile. The situation is that an American girl Liana’s Israeli mother takes her back to Israel in the early nineteen sixties, and yes, there was a shooting war going on then too, albeit generally with smaller arms. There are deaths: the girl’s father is a suicide, as is her mother’s beloved brother. A small naked Arab boy is shot to death in a skirmish between Israeli soldiers and snipers from the Jordanian side. An important part of the novel is Liana’s passionate relation to her mother who is rich with smells and embraces. Liana wants to run away to Paris which she associates with her father, but instead she finds an American diplomat’s son who has gone missing. There are illicit forays into Jordan; Liana runs away. There is sex, there are smells, always smells and fabrics. There is a rejoining with the family. A feverish, sensual, remarkable book.
Barbara Smith--Through the Glass is a novel that centers on a time of crisis for Patricia Yokum Tazewell, a stained glass artist who is the heart of a tiny West Virginia community of new homes and diverse families. Patricia is a surrogate grandmother; mother of less-than-ideal children; and a woman with many men in her life, including the husband she loved passionately who died four years before this story begins. During the handful of spring days of the novel, she deals with her past, and her past mistakes, faces up to some unpleasant wannabe-gangster teens, the possible reappearance of an estranged brother, her daughter’s emotional deterioration, and a shocking death. It was a lot of fun to get to know Patricia– fun because she’s sixty two and desirable to several men, because she drinks and gets into physical altercations to protect her bipolar daughter and her property. Fun because her spiritual life is pretty equally divided between her dead husband andGod. Pat faces everything that life throws at her with energy if not necessarily aplomb. The loose ends are not tied up neatly, but you finish the novel rooting for her and deeply pleased to have been invited into her rich and complex life.
R. T. Smith--The Calaboose Epistles is a varied collection of stories, mostly set in the Southern mountains. The stories have been previously published in excellent journals like TriQuarterly and Prairie Schooner and Story South and Southern Humanities Review. Some, like “The Pig is Committed” and “Against a Sea of Troubles,” are vintage Southern gothic combining humor, violence, tall tale, and exquisite romps of language. The writing is always brilliant, exuberant with word explosions that combine a modernist experimentalism with Appalachian richness of vocabulary and dialect: “Mussed and wizened but rat-agile.” he writes in “Rampskin,” a retelling of the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin.
Johnny Sundstrom— DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT is a novel that is a paean to the ways of the West– the real, contemporary West. It eschews movie-style macho confrontations, rather circling around its events with a far more realistic kind of tension and excitement. The pivotal event, foretold from early on, is that an important character is going to die young. Yet, when the death happens, it is both shocking and extremely moving. It is an accidental death, typical of the hard life of Wyoming ranchers but no less monumental for the future of the individual's family. The foreground story is about the love between a teenage boy descendent of one of the old time white families and a Northern Arapaho girl. In this case, the sins of the boy's ancestors, which he has barely heard of, turn out to be fully alive among the historians of the girl's tribe. How this is worked out is romantic and satisfying. Sundstrom also does a great job making the daily working life of his characters come alive. All this wealth of detail is told gracefully and with lots of intrinsic drama-- a rich portrait of the contemporary West.
Juanita Torrence-Thompson-- breath-life, her latest collection, includes a rich variety of poems including “Her Sweet Ear Flowered,” representing her exploration and compression, and “Aida,” a dramatic monologue about singing with Placido Domingo. I especially liked “My Soul,” where she writes in the first stanza: “My soul, a rhapsody/plays melodies at each stanza/each insatiable syllable.” She experiments with many forms, offers many delights. Check out a longer review .
Kal Wagenheim, editor— Inside Out: Voices From New Jersey State Prison. Poems, stories, memoirs and commentaries by 43 inmates who took part in a creative writing workshop. Compiled and edited by Kal Wagenheim, who directed the workshop. "Fascinating stuff," writes Leigh Montfille, and Theo Bensen of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says, "Moving stories and poems that come from the heart...This program might well be transplanted to other institutions." Order here . Profits will be donated to efforts to improve educational opportunities for inmates and re-entry programs once they are released from prison. Here's what one of the inmate authors said: "Dear Professor Kal, Thank you so much for all that you've done for us. Thank you a million times for believing in us. Please send me a copy of the book as soon as you can. In my plight often do I feel helpless. I feel like I'm not making a contribution to anything. A wise man said that the best man is he who is of maximum benefit to all people. To know that the book will benefit others makes my heart happy. The more I mature into a real man the more I want to help myself, family, and others in need. A real man finds his purpose in life. A real man leaves as great legacy. I was inspired by you through your creative writing workshop. I believe I can achieve many of my goals through creative writing..."
Kal Wagenheim— The Secret Life of Walter Mott .
"Some books are just delights - light, airy, and easy. Kal Wagenheim has written one of those books. The Secret Life of Walter Mott takes us back to a simpler time, the nineteen fifties, and playfully shares a character who seems to be right out of a James Thurber fantasy but who is living a life of real secrets and schemes. Wagenheim has done a masterful job of capturing the details of Newark, New Jersey and those times when post World War America was setting the stage for economic expansion and unrivaled possibilities. Perhaps more masterful is the author's encapsulation of that cultural and economic potential in his eponymous character's life. With humor and sensitivity Wagenheim introduces us to a cast of characters straight from the cubicles of business. Sadly, they all lack the desire, the motivation, the oomph to be more - all that is except for Walter Mott. Creative, rebellious, sexual, and very human: Mott is the grain of sand that ultimately doesn't fit in. Yet, his adventures and misadventures always end up with him fitting in just fine. This is a book that you want to read for a laugh and maybe for a groan of recognition." - Ken Weene, author of "Widow's Walk" and "Songs For My Father."
Crystal E. Wilkinson— Blackberries, Blackberries
This collection of short stories is told in a wonderful voice that sounds both black and Appalachian, which is no surprise as the stories are set in small town Kentucky with mostly African American characters. There are some real knock-out stories including “Waiting for the Reaper” about how a woman’s life is colored by how she’s always expecting/wanting to die and be with her loved ones. “Peace of Mind” is a monologue during one afternoon while a woman tries to have some time to herself and gets called by her ex husband and her kids and camp at her best friend while her lemonade melts; “Tipping the Scales” is a novel-in-miniature. The publisher's website is at Toby Press..
Bill Zavatsky -- Where X Marks the Spot. Poems. A magnificent teacher of poetry and literature finally coming out with another book of his own poems after thirty years. For information about the book, go to http://www.hangingloosepress.com .
Trish Bentley—ABOUT TOWN WITH BENNY BE
A charming board book for the very young with photos and drawings in which an English setter named Benny Be travels around New York City in a taxi cab from Times Square to the East Village with stops at the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty!
The only way to get this is online at http://www.bennybe.com , unless the author and her dog are visiting a book store near you. .
Ed Myers— ICE
Are you looking
to buy books for children and young adults about real life adventure?
From the small Montemayor Press come three excellent stories
by Ed Myers, a writer who has published over forty books for
children and adults with presses of all sizes. I mentioned ICE in a past issue of the Newsletter (see http://meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive71-75.html#ice ). Booklist says of ICE: "The story unfolds as Seth and
Jenna speak to their counselors. Seth was the driver in a car accident
that killed his girlfriend, Frannie. Jenna, Frannie's sister, cannot
forgive him and alternately avoids Seth and stalks him. Both teens join
the local EMT squad, and there is much fascinating detail about how
emergency medical technicians do their jobs and make their decisions.....". GraceAnne DeCandido .
Ed Myers — Duck and Cover
For something really different,
Duck and Cover , a story about a boy who lives during the days
of the Cold War– and gets involved in a cold war of his own,
right on his own street. Check these and more at http://www.montemayorpress.com.
David Weinberger —My Million Dollar Secret
David Weinberger is a well known journalist, NPR commentator, and blogger, and this is his first children's novel. The narrator and his friends are middle school students, and the plot is both entertaining and idea-driven: a boy's father is a newspaper man who has a crusade against lotteries, and the boy wins a tremendous amount of money— in the lottery. So the story is about how to hide something from your parents without lying and how to spend and give away lots and lots of money. It also has an amusing sub-sub plot about how kids have to hire grown-ups to front for them in various business situations. It has just the slightest hint of love interest, an evil capitalist who runs the rival town newspaper, some mean girls who get a mild comeuppance, a little sister who picks up lice at school every year, and lots more. This would be an excellent choice for a gift for a thoughtful student, but it would also make a great centerpiece in an Ethics for Children class. I had a great time reading it. This book can be purchased as a regular paperback or downloaded as an e-book.
FOR THIS ONE HOUR "For WWII devotees and military readers...The novel documents the time of history surrounding the hideous slaughter of thousands of Polish army officers."
THE FIFTY-FIVE WEST VIRGINIAS "Short biographies of outstanding persons from all 55 West Virginia counties....Gen. Stonewall Jackson...Senators Robert Byrd [and]Jennings Randolph...Jay Rockefeller...Jerry West...Pearl Buck..."
BATTLING THE INDIANS, PANTHERS, AND NITTANY LIONS "A century of football history from Washington and Jefferson College."
CHRIS, THE RHODE ISLAND WONDER DOG "Was this dog an intellectal or a psychic?"
SNOWFLAKES ON THE DON Books (e-book) "This action-driven historical novel carries its two main characters from the Battles of Britin, Stalingrad, and the Drava, where the 'invincible' Stalinision was smashed by the Cossacks, to American and the Cold War.
All of these are available signed from Discount Books, 55 Woodland Drive, Brightwaters, NY 11718.
Click here for a list of poetry books matched to the people in your life.
(Thanks to Barbara Crooker)
A Special Book Store
Phyllis Moore recommends this West Virginia bookstore specializing in Appalachian, West Virginian, Appalachia, and simple living:.
Frog Creek Books
800 Smith St.
Charleston, WV 25301
304-346-5222 800-395-7074
Working With Truman : A Personal Memoir of the White House Years By Ken Hechler Univ of Missouri Press, 1996 Paperback, 318 p., [8] p. of plates. The critically acclaimed Working With Truman, is a warm and lighthearted memoir of what it was like to work behind the scenes in the White House during Truman's term as president. Focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of those who worked closely with Truman and on the Truman not seen by the public, Hechler provides insight into one of our greatest presidents. $29.95
Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America By Elliott J. Gorn Hill and Wang, 2002 (reprint) Paperback, 432 pages. Her rallying cry was famous: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." A century ago, Mother Jones was a celebrated organizer and agitator, the very soul of the modern American labor movement. At coal strikes, steel strikes, railroad, textile, and brewery strikes, Mother Jones was always there, stirring the workers to action and enraging the powerful. In this first biography of "the most dangerous woman in America," Elliott J. Gorn proves why, in the words of Eugene V. Debs, Mother Jones "has won her way into the hearts of the nation's toilers, and . . . will be lovingly remembered by their children and their children's children forever. "Elliott Gorn's outstanding and dramatic new biography of Mother Jones reacquaints us with this extraordinary figure [and] serves as an excellent introduction to the early history of the modern American labor movement." _ Chicago Tribune $20.00
Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia By Wayne Winkler Mercer University Press, 2004 Paperback, 314 pages. Winkler examines the history of the Melungeons and the ongoing controversy surrounding their mysterious origins. Employing historical records, news reports over almost two centuries, and personal interviews, Winkler tells the fascinating story of a people who did not fit the rigid racial categories of American society. Along the way, Winkler recounts the legal and social restrictions suffered by Melungeons and other mixed-race groups, particularly Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Act, and he reviews the negative effects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century magazine and journal articles on these reclusive people. Walking toward the Sunset documents the changes in public and private attitudes toward the Melungeons, the current debates over “Melungeon” identity, and the recent genetic studies that have attempted to shed light on the subject. But most importantly, Winkler relates the lives of families who were outsiders in their own communities, who were shunned and shamed, but who created a better life for their children, descendants who are now reclaiming the heritage that was hidden from them for generations. $19.00
My Father, Daniel Boone : The Draper Interviews With Nathan Boone By Nathan Boone, Neal O. Hammon (EDT); Olive Van Bibber Boone, Lyman Draper Univ Press of Kentucky, 1999 Hardcover, 176 pages. Born in 1815, archivist Lyman Draper was a tireless collector of oral history and is responsible for much of what we know about Daniel Boone. In an 1851 visit with Boone's youngest son, Nathan, and Nathan's wife, Olive, Draper produced over three hundred pages of notes that became the most important source of information about Daniel. The interviews provide a wealth of accurate, first-hand information concerning Boone's years in Kentucky, his capture by Indians, his defense of Fort Boonesboro, his lengthy hunting expeditions, and his final years in Missouri. My Father, Daniel Boone is an engaging account of one of America's great pioneers, in which Nathan makes a point of separating fact from fiction. From explaining the methods his father used to track game to detailing how land speculation and legal problems from title claims caused Boone to leave Kentucky and take up residence farther west, Nathan Boone's portrait of his father brings a crucial period in frontier history to life. $25.00
Growing & Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal & Other Woodland Medicinals By Scott W. Parsons & Jeanine M. Davis Bright Mountain Books, 2005 Paperback, 466 pages. Practical advice for cultivating woodland botanicals for personal use, cash crops, landscape plants, or medicinals. Covers the history, production, uses, and marketing of fourteen forest herbs: American ginseng, bethroot, black cohosh, bloodroot, blue cohosh, false unicorn, galax, goldenseal, mayapple, pinkroot, ramps, spikenard, wild ginger, and wild indigo. Fully illustrated. $25.00 Baskets and Basket Makers in Southern Appalachia By John Rice Irwin Schiffer, 1982 Softcover, 192 pages. This is perhaps the country's most authentic and colorful book on American baskets and the interesting people who made them. Although this in-depth people-oriented book is centered on basketry in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and the surrounding area, basketmaking in Europe, New England, Pennsylvania, and other parts of the country is examined as a means of comparing and contrasting forms, materials and designs. Indian baskets, especially Cherokee are also included. $19.95
Upshur County (Images of America) By Upshur County Historical Society Arcadia Press, 2001 Paperback, 128 pages. In this book, a collection of photos show scenes of Upshur's past that made it what it is today. This book revisits this area during its earlier days, when time seemed to move much slower and wagon squeaks and horses' neighs were common sounds in the towns and along the roads. The reader will experience present-day Upshur County which highlights its growth in the industry. This volume celebrates Upshur's long and rich heritage by lingering on the stories and images of historical sites, which include the offspring of the sycamore tree in whose hollowed trunk Samuel and John Pringle lived in for three years in the 1700s. Pictures of the old courthouse that was damaged by fire three times in its first six months of existence. Readers will no doubt recognize many of the traditions captured in these pages, including scenes of street parades and the famous Strawberry Festival. $19.95
Wheeling, West Virginia (Images of America Series) By Brent Carney Arcadia Press Paperback, 127 pages. The history of Wheeling and Ohio County is both eclectic and engaging. Beginning in the colonial era when the legendary Betty Zane saved Fort Henry from an Indian attack by hiding gunpowder in her skirt, Wheeling eventually emerged as an important link between Eastern cities and the rest of the United States. The Wheeling Suspension Bridge, the Old National Road, and the B&O Railroad all passed through the bustling Ohio County. Over the years, Wheeling has been labeled everything from ìVictorian Wheelingî to ìSintown USA,î and these monikers represent the erse qualities of a town molded and shaped by the steel, coal, tobacco, and transportation industries. ÝÝWhether residents and visitors frequented the impressive Victorian mansions or Wheelingís infamous brothel district, they always had something to write home about. The incomparable collection showcased in this book spans five decades and was begun and continued by the Carney family. $19.95
Spirits Dark and Light: Supernatural Tales from the Five Civilized Tribes By Tim Tingle August House, 2006 Hardcover, 160 pages. The term Five Civilized Tribes is the name commonly given to the five major tribes of the southeastern part of the United States: the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. In the Native American tradition, there is a strong connection between the spirit world and the natural world. What happens in one has a definite impact on the other. In this collection, Native American storyteller Tim Tingle draws from the rich heritage of the Five Civilized Tribes, and brings tales from the spirit world into our world. $15.95
Native American Weapons By Colin F. Taylor Univ of Oklahoma Press, 2005 Paoerback, 128 pages. Featuring 155 color photographs and illustrations, Native American Weapons surveys weapons made and used by American Indians north of present-day Mexico from prehistoric times to the late nineteenth century, when European weapons were in common use." "Colin F. Taylor describes the weapons and their roles in tribal culture, economy and political systems. He categorizes the weapons according to their function - from striking, cutting and piercing weapons, to those with defensive and even symbolic properties - and he documents the ingenuity of the people who crafted them." "Taylor explains the history and use of weapons such as the atlatl, a lethal throwing stick whose basic design was enhanced by carving, painting, or other ornamentation. The atlatl surprised the De Soto expedition in the early 1540s, contributing to the Spaniards' defeat. Another highlight is Taylor's description of the evolution of body armor, first fashioned to defend against arrows, then against bullets from early firearms." "Over thousands of years the weapons were developed and creatively matched to their environment - highly functional and often decorative, carried proudly in tribal gatherings and in war. $14.95
Audio Books and Other Non-Book Items
Marie Stewart Crafts Store-- You can order from this Eastern Kentucky log cabin crafts store at Hindman Settlement School. Look for books, quilts, music, carved spoons, and corn husk dolls!
Swamp Press
These actually are books, but hand made with a letter press and so beautiful they count as art objects: no online presence I can find, but call them at 413-498-4343 or write Ed Rayher 15 Warwick Avenue, Northfield, MA 01360
Mountain Whispers Audiobooks
Ross Ballard's Mountain Whispers.com has come out with a 5 CD version of Lee Maynard's Crum, one of my all time favorite books. Ross Ballard, is the voice actor
and producer with a mastery of regional dialect and the age-old
art of fine storytellng. Crum makes a terrific audiobook. Its episodic quality and rambling series of incidents totally engrossed me as I drove over the Allegeny Front from West Virginia through western Maryland and then north on I-81 through Pennsylvania. You totally trust the storyteller (that's Lee channelled by Ross) to twist and snake around all those characters and funny and tragic incidents and then return to its stated themes of escape and extremelly reluctant celebration of a time and place. If you haven't read Crum, do, but even if you have, enjoy it again this way. No one ever forgets forget Ruby's apple slice or the Great Meat Robbery. And a lot of other things.
Richard Currey -- LOST HIGHWAY, the Audio drama
Finally, a special
treat for people who like to listen while they drive! MountainWhispers.com
has released its 7th audio drama on CD– LOST HIGHWAY by Richard
Currey, performed by Ross Ballard II. A nuanced and poetic first-person
narrative, Richard Currey's novel tells the story of Sapper
Reeves, a gifted country music singer/songwriter working the
rainy backroads and smoke-filled taverns of the southern mountains
after World War II. The performer, Ross Ballard, is an actor
and producer with a mastery of regional dialect and the age-old
art of fine storytellng. The story's fictional song "Miranda"
comes to life along with additional award winning bluegrass
music. Learn more at www.mountainwhispers.com. Also, see the WVU Press reprint of the book below!
Everyday Blessings Calendar
Barbara Crooker has a 2006 Everyday Blessings calendar, a 365-day, page-a-day boxed calendar, is now in bookstores.Click here: Everyday Blessings
Blogger Blog
is a collection of short stories that surprise and delight. Reading this weird and wonderful collection is sometimes like stepping into a surrealist painting and sometimes like being too close for comfort to real life. Many of the stories are about relationships in trouble, often with a woman with a strange name: "Alaska," "Dyspnea." Some take frightening urban situations (a home invasion, a knife point robbery) and give them a masterful twist. Sometimes this works both to make the events like a terrifying dream in which the dreamer/protagonist is nearly catatonic, and to make them funny. How does he do that? Terror and humor, unrealistic and yet it's as if it happened to you? You don't sit down and read the book front to back in a big gulp. Nor do you precisely savor it- the stories are too acerbic for savoring- but each foray into Levenberg's world of uncertainty and other constants is invigorating and engrossing.
sex addict. But it's his stuttering that reminds the reader of Harry's pain. The stuttering is on the page, typographically displayed in a sort of dialect. It drives Harry's relationships with other characters, as they finish sentences for him or recommend behavioral clinics where he might find treatment and avoid losing his job on the fictional Clarion copy desk.... His job gives Harry regular pay, which finances a descent into non-gentrified early 90's scenes: the midnight streets of Long Beach and the poorly lit interiors of May's Chieu Hoi bar, swingers clubs, porno theaters, and residential motels. In the night world of LA Harry finds surrogate if sometimes exploitative families: May's actual and barroom families and Kelly's mostly criminal family. These unconventional homes give Harry an odd direction in life--a type of voice--and help him muster the courage to initiate a return to Oregon to raise the son he doesn't know. If there's any salvation in Harry's live and the lives of the novel's other characters, it resides in these patched-together families, in trying to be fathers and mothers and children, perhaps not necessarily good ones, but ones who have enough conviction nonetheless to believe that they must try.
father, the death of both of them, threatened eyesight to the narrator, a family with members living essentially alone while together. I don’t mean that Jansen makes light of what is serious, but rather that he handles his stories in the way we are told to handle tender dough– gently, quickly, expertly. Jansen manages, for example, to present his mother’s frantic anti-Semitism in a perfect mix of light and dark, shocking and familiar, close and far, painfully sharp and almost lilting. How does he do that?
fiction. Kaminsky is a poet, essayist, editor, psychotherapist, and well-known worker with life narrative and the elderly. The themes include aftermath– the aftermath of the Holocaust, the aftermath of the Soviet Union, and the aftermath of family trauma, some related to Holocaust survival and some not– but it is also about the way writers past and present support other writers. it is also about insomnia and ambition and married love. Reading the book is like having an amazing, far-reaching conversation without ever becoming tired. Like the best conversation, it is deeply of the heart and of the mind at once, and you are swept through all the subjects by the play of an engaged mind and personality. This is from Red Hen Press.
infused with the rules of American manhood. Maynard calls his new book a fictional memoir– a kind of heightened and imagined life that Maynard describes in the subtitle as “Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life.” Organized chronologically from 1936 to 2005, it is a series of beautifully written short narratives. They begin with the story teller as a free-ranging boy in the mountains; he is then transplanted for a time to the mean streets of Baltimore, Maryland; then he is back in Crum, West Virginia– the scene and title of his extraordinary first novel. Many of the pieces here are about the boy and then man pitted against nature– sometimes inadvertently as in the horrific incident with the hornets (yes, it’s as bad as you can imagine), and then, as the narrator gets older, he sets the physical challenges himself. He braves trial by snow, desert, ocean water, and storm– and these are the bracing, honest struggles. The really ugly stuff (excluding those hornets) comes with his run-ins with various human low-lifes. For a full length review, take a look at what Phyllis Moore wrote in Appalachian Heritage
gh publishes this fine collection by the poet laureate of West Virginia.
satisfactions of nineteenth century fiction: an omniscient viewpoint, philosophical ruminations, explorations of the levels of a particular society, early twentieth century Puerto Rico, but it is in no way an old-fashioned novel, but rather something new and extremely original. The ending gives insight and meaning to the preceding pages, and also demonstrates one of the ideas the novel plays with– the impossibility of avoiding the past, which makes the present sometimes tragic but also precious. The style contrasts leisurely description and narration with runs of crisp dialogue, almost minimalist in their untagged flow, and it is studded with surprising passages that are like extended metaphors grown into fables:
East Village. Some of the best stories are funny as well as sad, like “The Garage Door,” in which an unemployed suburban guy steals a garage door out of a quirky nostalgia for his childhood. In “At the Laundromat”a man finds an ad on the bulletin board and starts going to the therapist upstairs while his clothes spin. Other pieces are brilliantly, painfully dark, like the story of “L.,” whose girlfriend has left him during a New York City black-out. This story has a surprise ending that is amply earned. Another of my favorites is the title story, “Motel Girl,” an exploration of what rape would be like from a woman to a man. In all of the stories, there are surprises and a nicely astringent fictional experience.
Tazewell, a stained glass artist who is the heart of a tiny West Virginia community of new homes and diverse families. Patricia is a surrogate grandmother; mother of less-than-ideal children; and a woman with many men in her life, including the husband she loved passionately who died four years before this story begins. During the handful of spring days of the novel, she deals with her past, and her past mistakes, faces up to some unpleasant wannabe-gangster teens, the possible reappearance of an estranged brother, her daughter’s emotional deterioration, and a shocking death. It was a lot of fun to get to know Patricia– fun because she’s sixty two and desirable to several men, because she drinks and gets into physical altercations to protect her bipolar daughter and her property. Fun because her spiritual life is pretty equally divided between her dead husband andGod. Pat faces everything that life throws at her with energy if not necessarily aplomb. The loose ends are not tied up neatly, but you finish the novel rooting for her and deeply pleased to have been invited into her rich and complex life.
Southern mountains. The stories have been previously published in excellent journals like TriQuarterly and Prairie Schooner and Story South and Southern Humanities Review. Some, like “The Pig is Committed” and “Against a Sea of Troubles,” are vintage Southern gothic combining humor, violence, tall tale, and exquisite romps of language. The writing is always brilliant, exuberant with word explosions that combine a modernist experimentalism with Appalachian richness of vocabulary and dialect: “Mussed and wizened but rat-agile.” he writes in “Rampskin,” a retelling of the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin.
