Knuckle Bear is both enlivened and burdened by a fractured language, inherited from the settlers who first came to the North Carolina mountains from the hills and valleys of Scotland and Ulster to claim this wild land. It is a language that is broken and crippled, violent and near violent, innocent and depraved, and loving and brutal as these characters. As author of The Iguana Tree, Michel Stone notes, “If Tim Peeler were a novelist he’d have written Deliverance, only even somehow more Deliverance than the Deliverance Dickey wrote. I couldn't stop reading. Like when you pass a horrific train wreck and instead of turning away you hit the brakes, got to keep looking to see how bad this all ends up for those unfortunate people. There is no way it is going to be remotely okay. And yet, farther in, I am feeling sympathy and EMPATHY for the whole lot of them, and then the ending after all this hard, dark, strange stuff was so sweet and good I could almost cry.”

Knuckle Bear

Literature & Fiction

Peeler, Tim

Poetry

Red Dirt Press

Following in the tradition of Alabama memoirist Rick Bragg, Don’t Date Baptists explores the world of Bessemer, Alabama, circa 1960's-70's from the eyes of a boy who grew up there, struggling to understand the divide of race, class, religion, and neighborhood anxiety. Essayist Terry Barr learns from his parents that not all love is the same; that certain neighbors are not to be trusted; that crosses and stars and popular music can with seamless metamorphosis signal danger, desire, hate, and deep abiding love. While public pools might be filled with clay to prevent integrated swimming, or so-called friends might slur those darker than themselves, this southern boy learns to appreciate how these incidents and relationships have challenged and molded him into the teacher, writer and unapologetic Bessemer man that he is.With humor and poignant authenticity, Barr captures what it means to come of age as the New South cuts its teeth, with much trial and terrible error, in territory that is rich and explosive, devastating and beautiful.

Don't Date Baptists: and Other Warnings From My Alabama Mother

Biographies & Memoirs

Barr, Terry

Community & Culture

In 1926-27, a small Kansas community, Medicine Lodge, prepared for its first Peace Treaty Pageant. Marcia Lawrence chronicles the eighteen months leading up to the event. Included are stories of a brutal tornado; bank robbers and hundreds of vigilantes who pursued them; chicken thieves; and even an arrest for concubinage. As the community busies itself for the event, the reader gets a fascinating glimpse into 1920s life in a small Kansas town.

Spirit of the Prairie: The History of the Making of the Medicine Lodge Indian Peace Treaty Pageant by Marcia Lawrence (2015-09-25)

History

Marcia Lawrence

Americas

Buena Suerte in Red Glitter

Craven, Bruce

The Alexandria You Are Losing and Other Stories explores universal themes of dislocation and uprooting; American and Arab characters yearning for a home they have forsaken, or for a more palpable sense of identity and belonging. The stories also illuminate the common threads that connect us as human beings, the bridges we form one to the other despite conflict and misperceptions. We see an American experience, whether one is a recent immigrant or not, infused with migration, transience and displacement. The stories in this collection capture in a genuinely universal manner that sense of not belonging, of being "un-housed" in some way, and searching for a place in the world.

The Alexandria You Are Losing

El-Sayed, Yasser

Short Stories & Anthologies

Old Country Fiddle orbits around the lives of an eccentric cast of characters from the Texas Hill Country. A roadside flag salesman profits from a neighborhood culture war. A professional congratulator enters a kolache-eating contest to impress a former kolache queen. A closet agnostic tries to dodge going to church with her mother, and the publisher of a Czech-Tex newspaper, using a walker called "the Silver Stallion," delivers papers to the residents at the nursing home where he lives. These stories, which are told with a Texas drawl, cover a wide range of emotional territory and touch on themes that go far beyond the county line. "In Old Country Fiddle, Heath Dollar's comic plots and characters merge the Old South with the New South in his humorous stories set in Waylon County. Dollar's work punches the gut with a Raymond Carver working class poignancy that intersects with the Southern grotesque of Flannery O'Connor. Heath Dollar is a writer to watch." -Donna Walker-Nixon, senior editor of Her Texas "Old Country Fiddle transports you to a unique and delightful Texas community. Heath Dollar entices you into this rural setting with exquisite ease, then unspools one captivating story after another, each more enchanting than the others. Once you befriend these vibrant characters, you won't want to leave them behind." -Lara Bernhardt, editor of Conclave "Dollar's stories are as wistful as they are joyful, as satirical as they are weighty, with characters as unique in their pursuits as they are universal in their longing. In a manner reminiscent of Tagore's stories on the common man in India, Dollar brings into vivid relief the lives of so many who would otherwise remain invisible amidst the Texas Hill Country." -Yasser El-Sayed, author of The Alexandria You Are Losing

Old Country Fiddle Stories

Dollar, Heath

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