Out of the Rough: Women's Poems of Survival and Celebration

Religion & Spirituality

Novello Festival Pr

Set in the South in the 1950s, three friends, Bo and Mae Maude, who are white, and Pollo, who is black, find their lives change as their carefree summer takes a violent turn.

Fire in the Rock: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Martin, Joe

Literary

Tis the Season: The Gift of Holiday Memories [Oct 01, 2001] Peacock, Tom

Tis the Season: The Gift of Holiday Memories

Parenting & Relationships

In Waiting for the Trout to Speak, her second book of poetry, Honeycutt demonstrates clearly her mastery of the art that she has shared so effectively with her students. She builds on her already established reputation for the delicate lyricism of her work. Honeycutt writes simultaneously about the human condition, and the mystery and beauty of the natural world that surrounds us.Nationally renowned poet Peter Meinke concludes that Honeycutt's poems are reminiscent of Wordsworth's, and teach us about the meanings inherent in our own lives. . . . We finish Waiting for the Trout to Speak with the sense of having traveled through a deeply satisfying spiritual landscape.North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell agrees. Honesty and clarity, he writes, are the prime guarantees of genuine poetry. Irene Blair Honeycutt offers these qualities so naturally that a reader feels immediately in her personal presence. Fine company she makes, too. Unhurried, intimate but not confessional. . . For all its sorrows, Waiting for the Trout to Speak is cheering to hold and to read. Honeycutt's work is poetry at its best -- evocative and clear, accessible and honest, unflinching in its deep and subtle exploration of what it means to be human.

Waiting for the Trout to Speak: Poems

Irene Blair Honeycutt

Poetry

One Foot in Eden

Winner of the 2002 Novello Literary Award, One Foot in Eden is the first novel from acclaimed poet and short-fiction writer Ron Rash. The book was chosen for publication from more than 100 manuscript submissions. A richly textured story of love and murder, One Foot in Eden unfolds through the distinctive voices of a small-town sheriff, a young married couple, and those who share in their secrets. Sheriff Will Alexander knows who murdered Holland Winchester, but he can't find the body and no one's talking, least of all Holland's neighbor, Billy Holcombe. And Billy's pretty wife Amy seems to know something about it, too. For years, the mystery will go unsolved-until the day the power company forces everyone out and floods the valley and family farms where this close-knit community has lived and worked for generations. Rash is a native Appalachian, and writes with deep understanding and affection for a region often misunderstood. The story is a tribute to a time, place, and way of life slowly vanishing from the modern South.

One Foot in Eden: A Novel

Rash, Ron

Contemporary

For 11-year-old David Lear, there is nobody quite like his mother. She can be so caring, so warm and funny, but there are times when her drinking sweeps her away and her affection gives way to verbal abuse and sometimes even violence. As her moods grow darker and more intense, David tries several times to run away from home, before he is finally sent away to boarding school.
 At the beginning, it's an odd and unfamiliar place, an exclusive prep school in the New England hills, where the rules seem oppressive and hard for a boy to understand. David struggles to adjust and to find friends who will accept him despite the vestiges of an old physical handicap that still haunt him.
 With elegant prose and a deep and personal understanding of the story, award-winning poet Anthony S. Abbott offers us his debut novel, a coming-of-age odyssey that novelist Jill McCorkle calls "a beautiful story, a story of hope."
 As David slowly finds his footing at school, he must also contend with the legacy of his family. He sets out alone on a summertime journey in search of a father he hasn't seen in many years, a stepmother who loathes him, and a mysterious benefactress who pays for his schooling. Yet the most powerful and problematic character he must deal with is his mother, Maggie Hope, whose life has long since slipped from its moorings.
 For David, the question is whether something similar will happen to him or whether he will manage, as he becomes a young man, to overcome his family's history of tragedy and find the strength to make his way in the world.

Leaving Maggie Hope

Abbott, Anthony S.

This mouth-watering collection of more than 200 recipes showcases the best of traditional Southern cooking and storytelling. This is no ordinary cookbook, though it boasts plenty of old-fashioned recipes for cakes, pies, casseroles, and stews, submitted by people who hail from the Carolina mountains to the Low Country and even from locales around the world.
 Editor Amy Rogers invited more than 100 contributors to tell their favorite stories about food. Included are some of the Carolinas' most beloved writers, as well as many first-time writers who have wonderful tales to tell about their recipes. Josephine Humphreys describes how to catch and cook blue crabs. Jill McCorkle shares her grandmother's recipe for making fried apple pies. Lee Smith acquaints us with "Lady Food." True-crime writer Jerry Bledsoe asserts that "Seafood Bledsonia" is better than any other fish dish you can imagine. There are even some offerings from songwriters, including former Carolinian James Taylor, who passes along his recipe for baked beans.
 The book is divided into groupings such as Appetizers and Soups; Main Dishes; Vegetables and Side Dishes; Breads; Desserts; and Holiday Recipes and Other Specialties. Each recipe is accompanied by a story, telling where it came from, a firsthand account of how it became part of a family tradition, or a profile of the cook who submitted it. The stories are humorous, poignant, sometimes surprising, and always memorable.
 Sprinkled throughout are little-known facts about the origins and background of time-honored Southern foods.
 As this collection makes clear, the meals we prepare and share mean more to us than simple sustenance. Food is a touchstone of identity and culture, a link between one generation and another. No matter where you're from or what your tastes might be, this book will leave you hungry for home.

Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas : With More Than 200 Favorite Recipes

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Rogers, Amy T.

Regional & International

"Come home Boy, I got Cancer, Kill me." It was his father's voice, a thing he hadn't heard in twenty years. So begins Portisville, a story of love and betrayal, mystery and murder. Jimmy Wills knows he won't do what Truman Wills has demanded, but he finds himself drawn to the place of his birth by forces he isn't quite able to name. He discovers the town is remarkably the same. But in the course of his short visit, Jimmy begins to uncover disturbing secrets from the past, including the truth about his mother's murder. Truman was charged with the killing, but he was acquitted and the crime has remained unsolved. The murdered woman still haunts the dreams of her son, who was taken away at fourteen and raised by an aunt in North Carolina. Jimmy has tried since then not to think too much about his father, this hard and bitter man who had never once called him on the phone until his eerie demand to be killed. But when Jimmy pulls up to his father's house, rundown now and set deep in the woods, the two men slowly begin to reconnect, with all of the promise and tragedy that entails.

Portisville

Cushman, Steve

In her first new work published in nearly a decade, farmer-turned-novelist Dori Sanders looks back at the struggles and triumphs of her own family's story.  The farm where she grew up in Filbert, South Carolina, profoundly shaped the writer Sanders was to become. "Because the former slaves could buy the land with only a small down payment and the promise to pay the rest of the money owed, the rural farming community came to be called 'Promise Land,'" she explains.  But this is more than nostalgia for a simpler time. Sanders candidly details the hardships and dispels the myths of life in the Jim Crow South. She takes readers back to her childhood, when she first felt the sting of segregation.  She recounts the exploitation of black sharecroppers. "For generations to come and down to this day, the slaves' descendants would chant the true meaning of sharecropping for them: "The 'S' stands for slavery, the 'C' for continued," Sanders writes.  She powerfully evokes the ever-present threat of a KKK ride. Then, turning to today, she explains the difficulties black farmers still face in the 21st-century South. But with authority and clarity of voice, she never lets readers forget that hers was a community of grace, and of goodness.  This monograph is adapted from an address delivered October 2004, by Dori Sanders at the Southern Foodways Alliance Annual Symposium at the University of Mississippi, which co-sponsored publication of this work.

Promise Land: A Farmer Remembers

Biographies & Memoirs

SANDERS, DORI

Arts & Literature

Jasper, a stray cat with the ability to sense impending danger, must repeatedly decide whether to keep searching for the perfect home for himself or to risk his own safety to protect others.

Jasper

Children's Books

Groce, Michelle

Animals

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