IAm a Georgia Girl: The Life of Lucille Selig Frank, 1888-1957
byAnn Hite
Twenty-five-year-old Lucille Selig Frank's whole life changed on April 26, 1913, as the Confederate Memorial Parade marched through Atlanta, Georgia. Lucille was attending the opera matinee with her mother. Her husband, Leo Frank, sat in his office in the National Pencil Company, where he was superintendent, working on a financial report. The brutal murder of fourteen-year-old Mary Phagan, an employee of Leo's, took place in the pencil factory that day. Lucille's husband would be the last known person to see Mary alive. While much has been written about Mary Phagan's murder and Leo Frank's subsequent trial over the past 115 years, very little has given voice to Lucille Selig Frank and other women connected to the horrific events that took place between 1913-1915. Lucille was part of a mission to make Governor John Slaton aware of the antisemitism being shown to Leo during his arrest and trial. She paid a heavy price for her courage.
"I AM A GEORGIA GIRL is the story Ann Hite has yearned to tell since she was nine years old. That's when her grandmother shared with her the horrific experience of seeing Leo Frank's body hanging from a tree limb, the victim of a lynch mob avenging the murder of Mary Phagan. Hite delves into this sad chapter of Georgia history by focusing on Frank's wife, Lucille. It's a remarkable portrait of a quiet but strong young woman courageously defending her beloved husband against insurmountable forces that ultimately ripped him from her forever. The roles of Lucille Frank and other women swept up in the Leo Frank saga have often been underreported. Thanks to Ann Hite for so vividly bringing their stories to life against the backdrop of one of Georgia's most infamous episodes." -John Pruitt, retired WSB-TV news anchor and author of TELL IT TRUE
"Many of us know the story of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan--the murder, tabloid trial, 'guilty' verdict, and lynching, which led to a rise in antisemitism, a rebirth of the Klan, and the birth of the Anti-Defamation League. But the story we don't know is that of Leo's wife, Lucille. Now, for the first time, Ann Hite's I AM A GEORGIA GIRL gives Lucille a voice, and it's a poignant one rendering a heart-breaking story. No longer bound by society and forced to bear silent witness to the events that surrounded her husband, Lucille (and Ann) gives an indictment on race, class, religion, gender, and history that must not be ignored. History cannot be allowed to repeat itself." --Jeff Clemmons, author of RICH'S: A SOUTHERN INSTITUTION
Ann Hite’s debut novel, Ghost On Black Mountain, not only became a Townsend Prize Finalist but won GeorgiaAuthor of theYear in 2012. Her personal essays and short stories have been published in numerous national anthologies. The Storycatcher, her second Black Mountain novel, was released by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster on September 10, 2013. Lowcountry Spirit, an eBook novella, is available from Pocket Star, also an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Where The Souls Go, the third novel in the series, published by Mercer University Press, was a IndieFab finalist in 2016.Ann’s novel, Sleeping Above Chaos, was a finalist for the Georgia Author of the Year Award 2017. It was also a finalist for IndieFab 2017 and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Roll The Stone Away: A Family’s Legacy of Racism And Abuse was released by Mercer University Press in April 2020. Ann is an admitted book junkie with a library of over a thousand books. She lives near Powder Springs, Georgia with her husband and daughter, where she allows her Appalachian characters to dictate their stories.
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“I am honored to tell Lucille’s story and the intersecting stories of other women. This research and writing taught me that we hold the power to make a change…”
MANDY HAYNES INTRODUCES
SEPTEMBER’S FEATURED AUTHOR, ANN HITE
It’s my honor to introduce September’s featured author, Ann Hite. She is one of our co-editors here atWELLREAD with her monthly column, Mountain Magic, and I’m so proud to have her on the team. She is the author of the award-winning Black Mountain series. Ghost On Black Mountain, her debut novel, was one of ten finalist for The Townsend Prize in 2012 and won Georgia Author of the Year in 2012. Lowcountry Spirit is a novella set in Georgia's lowcountry. The Storycatcher is the second novel in the Black Mountain books.
Sleeping Above Chaos, the fourth book in the series, was a finalist for GeorgiaAuthor of the Year 2017 and also was a finalist in IndieFab in the Historical Fiction category. Where The Souls Go, the third book in the series, was a finalist for IndieFab in the Historical Fiction category 2016. Roll The Stone Away: A Family’s Legacy of Racism And Abuse was released by Mercer University Press inApril 2020. She has stepped out of her box with her newest publication, the nonfiction narrative about Lucille Selig Frank. I can’t wait to find out more about Ann and her new book, so let’s jump in!
Ten years of research and writing went into your newest book, a biography titled, I Am A Georgia Girl: The Life of Lucille Selig Frank. Can you tell our readers a little bit about who Lucille was?
Lucille Selig Frank was born and raised in Atlanta. Her father, Emil Selig, immigrated toAtlanta right after the Civil War with his
siblings. The Seligs are still known today in Atlanta for the real estate they own downtown and their philanthropic activities. Lucille’s grandfather, Jonas Cohen, was a co-founder of The Temple, the first Jewish synagogue in Atlanta. Lucille’s roots ran very deep in Atlanta. Lucille married Leo M. Frank in 1910. He was a Cornell University graduate in engineering. His uncle Moses Frank chose him to be the factory superintendent of The National Pencil Company in Atlanta, where Moses Frank was co-owner with Sig Montag. The couple had a promising future ahead of them.
When Lucille and Leo were married for two and a half years, things changed. On April 26, 1913, Confederate Memorial Day, Lucille asked Leo to go to the opera with her for one of the last shows before it leftAtlanta. He declined, choosing to go into work because he had a business report due to his boss, Sig Montag. Had he chosen to go to the opera, life would have been much different.
The pencil factory was closed for a holiday so the employees could attend the Confederate Memorial Day Parade. Most employees received their pay on Friday evening, but a few who didn’t work on that day due to a brass metal shortage had to pick up their pay on Saturday.
Thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan came in for her pay around 12:00 pm on her way to watch the parade. Leo paid her, and the last he saw Mary, she was headed down the hall to leave the building. Mary never left the factory and would be found dead during the early morning hours of Sunday, April 27, 1913 by the pencil
factory’s night watchman, Newt Lee. Leo would soon be arrested for murder and eventually found guilty of murder.
Leo was sentenced to death by hanging. Twenty-five-year-old Lucille fought long and hard to clear her husband’s name and save his life. She knew he wouldn’t have done the things Hugh Dorsey, the prosecutor, accused Leo of doing. Finally Governor John Slaton commuted Leo’s sentence to life in prison because he felt there wasn’t enough evidence to prove he committed the murder.
But this wasn’t the end of the story. A group of men from Cobb County, Georgia decided to take justice into their own hands. Leo was lynched in Marietta, Georgia—Mary Phagan’s childhood home—on August 17, 1915. One hundred and ten years ago, Lucille became a widow.
You believe, and I agree, that in the early part of the 20th century women were marginalized and oftentimes labeled as “hysterical”. But you know what a strong, courageous, and determined woman Lucille actually was. Her life ended in 1957, but if she were still alive today do you think she would face many of the same challenges now as she did all those years ago?
I love this question! One of the reasons I decided to write this book as nonfiction instead of my normal historical fiction was because so much of her story rings true today. Young girls and women in Georgia and throughout the South don’t know they have this strong woman—who lost everything—to learn from. Lucille’s
story is not a happily-ever-after story. Yet, it is a story of strength. I think it is women like Lucille who paved the way for us to stand up and fight to be heard now. I would love to say that today we, as women, don’t have to fight as hard for our rights. But, this isn’t so. We still are marginalized to a certain degree, but here in the United States, we can stand up for ourselves like the women of the early 20th century have taught us.
Lucille would still face most of the same challenges today that she faced in 1913-1915. She is Jewish and threatening antisemitism is still prevalent today. Just look at our recent headlines. Women’s voices today, while heard, are still marginalized. Look at recent laws passed to control their choices when it comes to their own bodies. No, I think Lucille would be disappointed that history is once again repeating itself especially when it comes to women. If she were alive today, the PTSD from her horrible trauma would be more treatable. At least now we recognize the existence of the need to address mental health. Basically, everyone wanted to forget what happened to Leo and not talk about it. That must have been very hard on her. Lucille signed every document requiring a signature Mrs. Leo M. Frank throughout her life. I can’t help but believe this was a way to make people remember.
Your grandmother was haunted by memories of the lynching of Mr. Frank. Something she talked with you about when you were a young child and that, understandably, left a big impression on you.
But there’s another connection to the people in the story that I think is one of those coincidences that seem to come from the universe. When did you learn that your husband is a cousin of Mary Phagan’s great-nephews? Is that something you learned during your research?
This is one of those dumb things that sat right under our noses, and neither of us paid any attention. When I began posting about Lucille on social media in 2015, one of my husband’s cousins, whom I had met, with the last name of Phagan—see how dumb it was we didn’t put two and two together—reached out to me. He asked if I was writing a book about Lucille. I said yes. He told me he had an original newspaper from the day of the lynching handed down in his family. He went on to explain Mary Phagan was his great aunt on his dad’s side. My husband is related to the cousin’s maternal side. I felt so stupid, and my husband felt even stupider. The Phagans believed and still believe today that Leo Frank was Mary Phagan’s killer. So, family wise, this was and is a slippery slope, but I did explain, I was writing this book about Lucille, who I felt was a victim as much as anyone else involved in this brutal set of events. She was a victim that never truly moved forward. I write at the end of my introduction the following:
“I am honored to tell Lucille’s story and the intersecting stories of other women. This research and writing taught me that we hold the power to make a change. What is the price of using this power? My great-grandfather believed in the mob’s right to take the law
into their hands. How many were complicit in Leo’s journey? How many today choose to stay silent instead of speaking the truth? Don’t we owe future generations more?
This book leaves the decision to the reader.”
This section speaks for me, my grandmother, my husband’s connection to the Phagan family, and most importantly for Lucille.
I can’t wait any longer to ask this question. How did you come up with the title?
The first title was insanely clunky and downright terrible. I will not share it here. The marketing director, Mary Beth Kosowski, at my publisher, Mercer University Press, suggested we use “I Am A Georgia Girl.” This was a direct quote from Lucille’s last public statement concerning Leo’s lynching in the fall of 1915.
I had one of those moments of why didn’t I think of that? After all, I have a poem at the beginning of this biography that I wrote after reading her comment in the newspaper archives. This was Lucille’s way of reminding the public that they didn’t just do this to Leo, the Jewish man from New York, they did it to one of their own. Lucille was first and foremost a Georgia girl.
Needle and Bone by Tonya Mitchell She saw a murder. Now the ghost won't let her forget—and the killer won't let her live.
Philadelphia, 1841. Seventeenyear-old Annis Hargrave is running from a nightmare. She and her brother have fled New York, burdened by secrets, grief, and the cursed blue pearl that may have brought death in its wake. But the past refuses to stay buried.
Offered work as a medical illustrator by the enigmatic Dr. Thomas Mütter, Annis enters a world of surgical marvels and grotesque beauty. There, amid bottled organs and broken bodies, she begins to rebuild her shattered life—until the ghost of the girl she couldn’t save begins to appear.And the man who killed isn’t far behind.
As bodies begin to fall and her brother is taken, Annis must descend into the eerie depths of Mütter’s surgical amphitheater—
The Pit—for a final confrontation with the monster who haunts her…
Darkly atmospheric and emotionally gripping, Needle and Bone is a gothic tale of guilt, vengeance, and a girl’s fight to reclaim her soul from the shadows.
A Wiregrass Childhood by
Brenda Sutton Rose
During the early years of America, in the wiregrass country of Irwin County, Georgia, two brothers and a strange boy meet by chance in the local river that runs deep with memory and myth, history and vitality. Micah is a quiet, sensitive boy with a rare ear for music. His older brother, Isaac, watches the world with the steady eye of someone wiser than his years. And Oak, a Creek boy from a nearby village, carries the weight of his people's stories and the silent worry of what's to come. They didn't mean to find each other, yet somehow it seems fated to be. Friendship grows in the hush of pine forests and the music drifting from Micah's violin--friendship that defies the hard lines drawn between settlers and native people as they navigate a tumultuous time of tension between the Creek natives and white settles.
Blending history and fiction, A Wiregrass Childhood is a tender, haunting story of connection, land, and the quiet courage of boyhood.
Life Close to the Bone
by Michael Spake
John Greenburn used to be somebody. Now, he's just a middle-aged guy, sitting behind his computer screen, waiting for his life to come to a screeching halt. Cognitive-Pharma, a Floridabased pharmaceutical company withdeeppocketsandasecretto hide, has caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice. The allegation? Medicare fraud. Nooneismoreonthehookthan John, who, as the Chief Ethics OfficeratCognitive-Pharma,has been the canary in the coal mine for the last 12 months. Not that his CEO cares much.
The CEO, a flashy, profit-driven type, certainly doesn't care that John's own mother, Francis, is in desperate need of CognitivePharma's top-selling drug to slow her memory loss. Haunted by what he knows of the fraud allegations - and the investigation's impact on the thousands of patients who depend on the medicationJohn draws closer to the memories he has of his own mother, Francis, and the ways she pushed him to be somebody.And, not just somebody, but the greatest youth tennis player upstate South
Carolina had ever known. With Francis' memory deteriorating, John's time to understand both himself and his mother, a product of the rough mill town that shaped her, is slipping away.
Life Close to the Bone moves from present day Florida and back in time to John's successful tenure on the youth tennis circuit and the textile mill in upstate South Carolina that, through Francis, shaped John's adolescence. It depicts a matriarchal family's relentless striving to overcome their "linthead" heritage and explores what it means to live for yourself and, ultimately, to forgive parents shaped by their own generational hardship.
Michael Spake is a healthcare attorney and writer. His debut novel, Life Close to the Bone, a coming-of-age story about the shift in memory that comes with moving from adolescence to adulthood, as the story’s protagonist learns about love and loss in a textile mill town located in upstate, South Carolina.
Michael and his wife Mary Lucia celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary. They have four children (22, 18, 18, and 13). Michael is from Anderson, South Carolina and graduated with honors from The Citadel with a BA (English) in 1994.
Michael currently lives in Lakeland, Florida. At home, when not writing, he gardens and raises chickens.
“Mesmerizing and deeply human.” —The BookLife Prize
“In prose as crystalline as the mountain air of Kathmandu, Like Water on Leaves of Taro meditates on family, grief and resilience.”
Candice Dyer,ArtsATL
“Acharya’s memoir shines with love and hope even in life’s darkest places.”—Anthony Grooms, Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductee and award-winning author
“An honest and provocative contribution to the memoir genre.” — Beverly J.Armento, award-winning author, Seeing Eye Girl: A Memoir of Madness, Resilience, and Hope
“A moving meditation on resilience, responsibility, and the fragile beauty of everyday life.” —Robert Gwaltney, award-winning author of The Cicada Tree
“With profound tenderness, Acharya shows how grief carves space for resilience, and how love endures even in the shadow of death.” Candice Louisa Daquin, Managing Editor, Lit Fox Books
“Quiet reflection on what gives life real meaning—good health, presence, and love.” —Kristine F.Anderson, author of Crooked Truth
Narrow the Road by James Wade
In this gripping coming-of-age odyssey, a young man’s quest to reunite his family takes him on a life-altering journey through the wilds of 1930s East Texas, where both danger and opportunity grow as thick as the pines.
With his father missing and his mother gravely ill, William Carter is struggling to keep his family’s cotton farm afloat in the face of drought and foreclosure. As his options wane,William receives a mysterious letter that claims to know his father’s whereabouts.
Together with his best friend Ollie, a mortician in training, William sets out to find his father and bring him home to set things right. But before the boys can complete their quest, they must navigate the labyrinth of the Big Thicket, some of the country’s most uncharted, untamed land. Along the way they encounter eccentric backwoods characters of every order, running afoul of murderers, bootleggers, and even the legendary Bonnie and Clyde.
But the danger is doubled when the boys agree to take on a medicine show runaway named Lena, eliciting the ire of the show’s leader, the nefarious con man Doctor Downtain. As William, Ollie, and Lena race to uncover the clues and find William’s father, Downtain is closing in on them, readying to make good on his violent reputation. With the clock ticking, William must decide where his loyalties lie and how far he’s willing to go for the people he loves.
StarmanAfter Midnight:A Novel-in-stories
by Scott Semegran
In suburban Wells Port, things are not what they seem: wild animals appear unexpectedly in backyards, raised garden beds produce fruit in days, not weeks, and a mysterious figure lurks across sidewalks late at night.
The stories in Starman After Midnight weave an often hilarious and sometimes melancholy spell. Four young boys are terrorized by a wiener dog on their walk to school, but strategize for a safer route. A beer-loving man befriends a likeminded neighbor, only to discover his jovial new acquaintance is a registered sex offender.An elderly Uber driver suspects a young rider is being lured by a night stalker and debates whether he should help her or mind his own business.
Connecting these stories are two next-door neighbors-Seff and Big Davewho couldn't be more different: one a progressive-minded writer, the other a conservative plumber. Their love of beer drinking, backyard philosophizing, and gossiping brings them together. When several pets in the neighborhood wind up missing or worse-dead-Seff and Big Dave monitor their security cameras for the culprit. When they discover a naked man roaming their street late at night, suspicions are raised while hysteria spreads through the neighborhood social media app. What is the connection between the missing pets and this naked man? Seff and Big Dave form a posse of neighbors to find out.
Moving between humor and surrealism, friendship and grief, Starman After Midnight is a novel told in stories, a collection that adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. From the quirky imagination of Scott Semegran, Starman After Midnight packs a comedic punch and uncovers the magic that seems possible in ordinary places.
This essay collection spans a lifetime’s worth of characters, settings, themes, and ways of organizing. It is, after all, a collection of Gary Fincke’s best work. Yet, for the variety of content covered, from coming-of-age to family to nuclear weapons to space exploration to mass shootings to rock attacks on cars to the author’s mother’s obsession with potato chips, this collection has a durable thread that ties them all together: the need to observe and record everything. Struggle and resilience. Fear and pleasure. Faith and despair. Love and loathing.All of those tensions are closely examined within the shadow cast by death.As Gary Fincke writes, “Somewhere, early every day, I think the acolyte of terror dreams our bodies as it decides the exact address for delight.” This “thinking,” in essay after essay, is brilliantly articulated in an ever-evolving, contemporary style. The metaphors are beautiful, the prose is clipped and clean, and the reader is constantly surprised by the connections Fincke draws like the one between his daughter and Charles Manson. A panorama of screams, another of hearts, another of headlights, all of them transformed into memoir. The subjects as varied as a four-part exploration of different kinds of hands, a meditation on terror and the fireworks American children know as Sparklers, and eulogies seeded by love of potato chips and crossword puzzles. Like the best essays, all of these “discover” in an intimate, personal way.
Momma May Be Mad: A Memoir is an inventive and striking memoir about motherhood, madness, and the grace of second and third chances. Kerry Neville shares the story of how she was caught in the perfect storm of bipolar disorder, anorexia, and alcoholism when her children were young and her marriage failing and how she found her way back to joy and hope. Electric shock therapy, hospitalizations, and even an exorcism were desperate, if failed, lifelines. But even in that dark chaos, she held fast to an abiding belief in love and fought to regain her own life and her life with her children.
To be released January 4, 2026.
An experienced adventurer partners with an innocent nineteen-year-old to plan a journey on the most dangerous river in the world. What starts as one man’s dream ends up as another man’s nightmare. It was a time when pushing our limits knew no boundaries and being nineteen had no restrictions.
MADVILLE PUBLISHING seeks out and encourages literary writers with unique voices. We look for writers who express complex ideas in simple terms. We look for critical thinkers with a twang, a lilt, or a click in their voices. And patois! We love a good patois. We want to hear those regionalisms in our writers’ voices. We want to preserve the sound of our histories through our voices complete and honest, dialectal features and all. We want to highlight those features that make our cultures special in ways that do not focus on division, but rather shine an appreciative light on our diversity.
"Freedom's Eve" is a historical fiction children's book that follows Layla, a little mouse living in an antique shop, who is magically transported back to a South Carolina plantation during the Civil War era by the spirit of Hawa, a young enslaved girl. Through Hawa's guidance, Layla witnesses the realities of slavery from New Year's Eve 1862 (when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect) through the eventual freedom that came in 1865. The story explores the daily lives, struggles, and resilience of enslaved people, their rich Gullah culture and language, and their journey to freedom. Written by Dawn Caldwell with illustrations by Bryce Caldwell, the book aims to teach honest history about slavery while honoring the strength and cultural heritage of the Gullah people.
Deep in the Northern Thicket, a cold wind blows. Tradition mandates the flock remain through the winter, and The Elders are big on following the rules.Wooblers are a serious breed who spend most of their time attending to important matters requiring somber faces. But Leader of the Flock has a deep, dark secret . . . and their most misunderstood member has uncovered it. Will the Wooblers have the faith to change? Things are about to get more colorful.
Learning to Fly, One Story at a Time
About Baby Crow:
"At Baby Crow, we believe in nurturing a lifelong love of reading, one story at a time. Our mission is to create inspiring, imaginative, and educational children's books that celebrate diverse voices and spark curiosity in young readers. We aim to unlock the doors to future success by encouraging children to discover the magic of books and storytelling."
At Colorful Crow Publishing, our mission is to amplify diverse voices and champion stories that resonate across communities. We believe every story matters, and we are dedicated to creating a welcoming, supportive platform for authors to share their unique perspectives. By fostering a collaborative environment, we aim to publish works that inspire, connect, and make a lasting impact on readers everywhere.
“Kim Davis is a master of moments. In Trust Issues, she brings her keen eye to the lives of ordinary people not often seen in literary fiction. With great skill, Davis shows how even the most mundane moments are fraught with meaning.”
—Maurice
Carlos Ruffin author of
The American Daughters
Trust Issues: Stories
K. P. Davis
“A work which should be read by anyone coming of age or who has already done so.”
—S.E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders and Rumblefish
In Volume One, you’ll find thirty-eight submissions written by a fantastic mix of awardwinning authors and poets plus new ones to the scene. Three submissions in this volume were nominated for a Pushcart Prize: Miller’s Cafe by Mike Hilbig, Sleeping on Paul’s Mattress by Brenda Sutton Rose, and A Hard Dog by Will Maguire. The cover art is by artist, Lindsay Carraway, who had several pieces published in February’s issue.
Contributors: Jeffrey Dale Lofton, Phyllis Gobbell, Brenda Sutton Rose, T. K. Thorne, Claire Hamner Matturro, Penny Koepsel, Mike Hilbig, Jon Sokol, Rita Welty Bourke, Suzanne Kamata, Annie McDonnell, Will Maguire, Joy Ross Davis, Robb Grindstaff, Tom Shachtman, Micah Ward, Mike Turner, James D. Brewer, Eileen Coe, Susan Cornford, Ana Doina, J. B. Hogan, Carrie Welch, Ashley Holloway, Rebecca Klassen, Robin Prince Monroe, Ellen Notbohm, Scott Thomas Outlar, Fiorella Ruas, Jonathan Pett, DeLane Phillips, Larry F. Sommers, Macy Spevacek, and Richard Stimac
InVolumeTwo, you’ll find fortythree submissions written by a fantastic mix of award-winning authors and poets plus new ones to the scene. Three submissions in this volume were nominated for a Pushcart Prize: A Bleeding Heart by Ann Hite, A Few Hours in the Life of a Five-Year-Old Pool Player by Francine Rodriguez, and There Were Red Flags by Mike Turner. The cover art for Volume Two is by artist, DeWitt Lobrano, who had several pieces published in November’s issue. Enjoy!
Contributors: Ann Hite, Malcolm Glass, Dawn Major, John M. Williams, Mandy Haynes, Francine Rodriguez, Mike Turner, Mickey Dubrow, William Walsh, Robb Grindstaff, Deborah Zenha Adams, Mark Braught, B. A. Brittingham, Ramey Channell, Eileen Coe, Marion Cohen, Lorraine Cregar, John Grey, J. B. Hogan, Yana Kane, Philip Kobylarz, Diane Lefer, Will Maguire, David Malone, Ashley Tunnell, Tania Nyman, Jacob Parker, LaVern Spencer McCarthy, K. G. Munro, Angela Patera, Micheal Spake, George Pallas, Marisa Keller, Ken Gosse, and Orlando DeVito
TheyAll Rest in the Boneyard Now by
Raymond L.Atkins (Author), Evelyn Mayton (Illustrator)
“Raymond Atkins writes with intuitive wisdom, as he channels those from beyond the grave. His poetry gives voice to those who once mattered, those who time wants us to forget. In They All Rest in the Boneyard Now, Atkins wrestles death from the dusty clay and breathes life into dry bones while reminding us that every soul who once had breath is worthy of being remembered. These saints, sinners, socialites, and the socially inept are all victims of time, or circumstance, as we too shall one day be. Atkins offers salvation to all who are tormented, and solace to those who seek eternal rest.”
– Renea Winchester,Award-winning author of Outbound Train
The Cicada Tree by
Robert Gwaltney
The summer of 1956, a brood of cicadas descends upon Providence, Georgia, a natural event with supernatural repercussions, unhinging the life of Analeise Newell, an eleven-year-old piano prodigy. Amidst this emergence, dark obsessions are stirred, uncanny gifts provoked, and secrets unearthed.
During a visit to Mistletoe, a plantation owned by the wealthy Mayfield family, Analeise encounters Cordelia Mayfield and her daughter Marlissa, both of whom possess an otherworldly beauty, a lineal trait regarded as that Mayfield Shine. A whisper and an act of violence perpetrated during this visit by Mrs. Mayfield all converge to kindle Analeise’s fascination with the Mayfields.
Analeise’s burgeoning obsession with the Mayfield family overshadows her own seemingly, ordinary life, culminating in dangerous games and manipulation, setting off a chain of cataclysmic events with life-altering consequences—all of it unfolding to the maddening whir of a cicada song.
Haints on Black Mountain:AHaunted Short Story Collection by Ann Hite
Ann Hite takes her readers back to Black Mountain with this haunted short story collection.
An array of new characters on the mountain experience ghostly encounters. The collection took inspiration from her beloved readers, who provided writing prompts. Wrinkle in the Air features Black Mountain's Polly Murphy, a young Cherokee woman, who sees her future in the well's water. Readers encounter relatives of Polly Murphy as the stories move through time.The Root Cellar introduces Polly's great grandson, who tends to be a little too frugal with his money until a tornado and Polly's spirit pays the mountain a visit. In The Beginning, the Middle, and the End, readers meet Gifted Lark on an excessively frigid January day. This story moves back and forth between 1942 and 1986 telling Gifted and her grandmother Anna's story. This telling introduces spirits that intervene in the spookiest of ways.
Red Clay Suzie by
Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Anovel inspired by true events. The coming-of-age story of Philbet, gay and living with a disability, battles bullying, ignorance, and disdain as he makes his way in life as an outsider in the Deep South—before finding acceptance in unlikely places.
Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet struggles with life and love as a gay boy in rural Georgia. He’s happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But Philbet’s world is shattered and his resilience shaken by events that crush his innocence and sense of security; expose his misshapen chest skillfully hidden behind shirts Mama makes at home; and convince him that he’s not fit to be loved by Knox, the older boy he idolizes to distraction. Over time, Philbet finds refuge in unexpected places and inner strength in unexpected ways, leading to a resolution from beyond the grave.
The Smuggler's Daughter by
Claire Matturro
Ray Slaverson, a world-weary Florida police detective, has his hands full with the murders of two attorneys and a third suspicious death, all within twenty-four hours. Ray doesn’t believe in coincidences, but he can’t find a single link between the dead men, and he and his partner soon smash into an investigative stonewall.
Kate Garcia, Ray’s fiancée, knows more than she should. She helped one of the dead attorneys, just hours before he took a bullet to the head, study an old newspaper in the library where she works. Kate might be the only person still alive who knows what he was digging up— except for his killer.
When Kate starts trying to discover what’s behind the murders, she turns up disturbing links between the three dead men that track back to her family’s troubled past. But she has plenty of reasons to keep her mouth shut. Her discovery unleashes a cat-and-mouse game that threatens to sink her and those she loves in a high tide of danger.
The Bystanders by Dawn Major
The quaint town of Lawrenceton, Missouri isn’t sending out the welcoming committee for its newest neighbors from Los Angeles—the Samples’ family. Shannon Lamb’s “Like a Virgin” fashion choices, along with her fortune-telling mother, Wendy Samples, and her no-good, cheating, jobless, stepfather, Dale Samples, result in Shannon finding few fans in L-Town where proud family lines run deep. Only townie, Eddy Bauman, is smitten with Shannon and her Valley Girl ways. The Bystanders is a dark coming-of-age story set in the 1980s when big hair was big, and MTV ruled. In a quiet town of annual picnics and landscapes, the Samples’ rundown trailer and odd behaviors aren’t charming the locals. Shannon and Wendy could really use some friends but must learn to rely upon themselves to claw their way out of poverty and abuse if they want to escape Dale.
The Bystanders pays homage toAmericana, its small-town eccentricities, and the rural people of the Northern Mississippi Delta region of Southeast Missouri, a unique area of the country where people still speak Paw Paw French and honor Old World traditions.
The Girl from the Red Rose Motel:ANovel by Susan Beckham Zurenda
Impoverished high school junior Hazel Smalls and privileged senior Sterling Lovell would never ordinarily meet. But when both are punished with in-school suspension, Sterling finds himself drawn to the gorgeous, studious girl seated nearby, and an unlikely relationship begins. Set in 2012 South Carolina, the novel interlaces the stories of Hazel, living with her homeless family in the rundown Red Rose Motel; Sterling, yearning to break free from his wealthy parents' expectations; and recently widowed Angela Wilmore, their stern but compassionate English teacher. Hazel hides her homelessness from Sterling until he discovers her cleaning the motel's office when he goes with his slumlord father to unfreeze the motel's pipes one morning. With her secret revealed, their relationship deepens. Angela-who has her own struggles in a budding romance with the divorced principal-offers Hazel the support her family can't provide. Navigating between privilege and poverty, vulnerability and strength, all three must confront what they need from themselves and each other as Hazel gains the courage to oppose boundaries and make a bold, life-changing decision at novel's end.
“Some of the happiest moments of my writing life have been spent in the company of writers whose work is included in these pages. They all brought their A-game to this fabulous collection, and at our house it is going on a shelf next to its honored predecessors. The only thing that saddens me is that the large-hearted William Gay is not around to absorb some of the love that shines through every word.” ―Steve Yarbrough
“The Best of the Shortest takes the reader on a fast-paced adventure from familiar back roads to the jungles of Viet Nam; from muddy southern creek banks to the other side of the world, touching on themes as beautiful as love and as harsh as racism. However dark or uplifting, you are guaranteed to enjoy the ride.” --Bob Zellner
“I had some of the best times of my life meeting, drinking and chatting with the writers in this book, times matched only by the hours I spent reading their books. This collection showcases a slice of Southern literature in all its complicated, glorious genius. Anyone who likes good writing will love it.” --Clay Risen
Walking The Wrong Way Home by Mandy Haynes
Spanning nearly twenty decades, the struggles and victories these characters face are timeless as they all work towards the same goal.
A place to feel safe, a place to call home.
Sharp as a Serpent's Tooth: Eva and other stories by Mandy Haynes
Each story features a female protagonist, ranging from ten to ninety-five years of age. Set in the south, you’ll follow these young women and girls as they learn that they’re stronger than they ever thought possible.
Oliver by Mandy Haynes
“Dear God…and Jesus and Mary…” Even though eleven-year old Olivia is raised Southern Baptist, she likes to cover her bases when asking for a favor. Unlike her brother Oliver, she struggles with keeping her temper in check and staying out of trouble. But Oliver is different, and in the summer of ’72 he proves to Olivia there’s magic in everything - it’s up to us to see it.
Mandy Haynes spent hours on barstools and riding in vans listening to great stories from some of the best songwriters and storytellers in Nashville, Tennessee. After her son graduated college, she traded a stressful life as a pediatric cardiac sonographer for a happy one and moved to an island off the east coast. She is a contributing writer for Amelia Islander Magazine, Amelia Weddings, and editor of Encounters with Nature, an anthology created by Amelia Island writers and artists. She is also the author of two short story collections, Walking the Wrong Way Home, Sharp as a Serpent's Tooth Eva and Other Stories, and a novella, Oliver. She is a co-editor of the Southern Writers Reading reunion anthology, The Best of the Shortest. Mandy is the editor-in-chief of WELL READ Magazine and the editor of four WELL READ anthologies.
Like the characters in some of her stories, she never misses a chance to jump in a creek to catch crawdads, stand up for the underdog, or the opportunity to make someone laugh. At the end of 2024, Mandy moved back to middle Tennessee and now spends her time writing and enjoying life as much as she can.
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INSIDE VOICES
“…A literary agent I met in New York while I was in the MFA program at Columbia liked my short stories but told me only novels sold. I needed to write a novel. I was twenty-four years old and daunted by the assignment.”
Robert Gwaltney and Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce author, Parul Kapur
Parul Kapur is a novelist, journalist, and literary critic. Her short fiction centers on the aftermath of colonialism in India and the lives of Indian immigrants. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Wascana Review, Prime Number, Midway Journal, and the anthology {Ex}tinguished & {Ex}tinct. As a journalist and critic, she has written for The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ARTnews, Art in America, Guernica, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Paris Review.
Inside the Mirror, which is inspired by her encounters with art world figures in Bombay, won the AWP Prize for the Novel and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Parul was recently named GeorgiaAuthor of the Year for First Novel by the Georgia WritersAssociation.
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: Will you tell us aboutInside theMirrorand how you foundyour way to Jaya's andKamlesh'sstory?
The simplest way to describe the story is ‘A Portrait of the Artists as Young Women.’ The girls are twin sisters in 1950s Bombay (now Mumbai) who dream of becoming artists of different kinds—a painter and a dancer. Jaya is attracted to the modern art movement taking the city by storm. Kamlesh is mesmerized Bharata Natyam, an ancient temple dance that the British outlawed and was nearly lost. The twins’ father is a
Robert Gwaltney & Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Parul Kapur
progressive man who decides to educate Jaya as a doctor and Kamlesh as a teacher. Afterward, he expects to arrange their marriages. But they have ambitions to seize their power as artists. The story grew organically over twenty years, but came together very suddenly, in four months, when I had to distill the narrative and cut the manuscript nearly in half for publication. Rewriting at rapid speed gave it new energy. Similarly, its beginning was sudden.Aliterary agent I met in NewYork while I was in the MFA program at Columbia liked my short stories but told me only novels sold. I needed to write a novel. I was twenty-four years old and daunted by the assignment. After a couple of false starts, I found my way to this story of twin sister artists, probably because I’d always longed for a sister and because I was a young woman hellbent on becoming an artist myself—a writer.
I knew whatever I wrote would be set in Bombay, where I’d just spent the most momentous year of my life as a reporter. Reconnecting to India on my own, without my parents presence, was essential to me, since I’d left as a child and wanted to know I still had a home there. Slowly, my experiences in Bombay, writing about artists, dancers, and even the residents of slum colony for a city magazine, worked their way into my novel. The time is midcentury because I was nostalgic for the India when my parents came of age, which I’d heard many entertaining stories about.
Inside Voices/Robert: Jaya and Kamlesh are twins, and they share a similarstruggle to find a way to live in thepractical
world—pleasing their family, not alienating themselves from society—andalso be true to themselves as artists. They go about it differently. Will you talk about what motivates Jaya and Kamlesh to go on their separate journeys?
Their childhood takes place during a turbulent time, and tragedy becomes the genesis of their arts. As twelve-year-olds, they witness the grief of relatives who’ve lost everything in the Partition of India—homes, wealth, close family members. Some of these refugee relatives take shelter in their home, and the girls absorb their distress. Jaya draws scenes of the violence she hears about. Their mother realizes they need an outlet for their disturbing emotions. Drawing and dance lessons become escapes that set each girl off on a journey to discover her creative powers.
As they mature, Jaya emerges as the more practical one. She negotiates with her parents to get a modern art teacher, despite the lowly reputation of male painters, and later negotiates permission to leave home—unheard of for an unmarried girl—to live with a female mentor. Kamlesh lives more deeply in her fantasies, wanting so fiercely to become a dancer that she doesn’t fully reckon with the fact that dancing on stage and in the movies would break every taboo of her society. Like many powerless people, she resorts to deceit to get what she wants. In the end, though, both girls are faced with breaking the sacred bond with family, which feels like a mortal wound in a society where family is the core of oneself.
Robert Gwaltney & Jeffrey Dale Lofton
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: Mirrors and mirroringimages are so important. There is the dressing table with multiple mirrors. The paintings become a mirror of sorts as one twin paints the other. I'd love to hear more about this theme that runs through your book.
Growing up, I would sometimes stare at myself in the mirror not out of vanity but curiosity—Who is this person? I lived in my head a lot and couldn’t reconcile the abstract world of thinking and feeling I mostly existed in with the finite image in the glass. In the book, the mirror becomes a vehicle for reckoning with reality and the limitations of our identity. The way the world sees us also impacts us. And, of course, art is considered a mirror of life, and the story looks into the artist’s life, all the drama, pain and conflict she draws from and must rise above to create something meaningful and beautiful.
Inside Voices/Robert: Jaya wonders if beauty is reasonenough to paint something. She also muses on the artist’s struggle to capture and translate what we see into art. Will you talk in a little more detail about her journeyas an artist and the challenges she faces to capture what touches her as important?
Jaya’s dilemma is that she’s frustrated painting flowers, a subject her teacher led her to, but she doesn’t know what else she might paint. The dilemma of the subject is one a lot of young artists confront. Flower painting goes back to Mughal art in India and it
Robert Gwaltney & Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Parul Kapur
Robert Gwaltney & Jeffrey Dale Lofton
was also considered an acceptable subject for the female hobby artist, as were sentimentalized village scenes, which Jaya also paints. It feels like a kind of liberation when the faces of the suffering patients she sees at medical college come bursting out of her. Eventually her heart splits between two subjects, perhaps natural for a twin—her sister in the motion of dancing and poor women in a remote hillside slum where her grandmother takes her to do volunteer work. The important thing about these women, she comes to see, is not the hardships they endure, but the vitality and capacity for happiness they possess despite everything. This leads Jaya to the idea of shakti, the Sanskrit world for female creative energy. I think of shakti as the foundation that launches her future.
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: A hallmark of Post-Colonial India was strict rules, especially the different ones for men and women. The common room with the table tennis is but one example. I'd like to know how those constraints shapedhow you crafted this tale?
The segregation of the sexes used to be absolute. Girls and boys were educated at separate schools. They didn’t mix socially. The first time anyone had a close encounter with a member of the opposite sex was at their wedding! An exception to this segregation was medical college, which admitted both sexes by the 1950s, though the number of female students, like Jaya, was
Robert Gwaltney & Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Parul Kapur
miniscule. Since it used to be exclusively male, the campus was still oriented that way with a boys’common room that she and her friends deliberately breach.When she enters into an illicit romance with an older student, she guards it with the utmost secrecy, even from other students, because it’s taboo. But this relationship becomes part of her journey of freeing herself, just like art. Jaya isn’t an outwardly rebellious person, but she’s inner directed, and a person who listens to their own voice is sometimes the most subversive of all.
Inside Voices/Robert: Kamlesh is an accomplished dancer and is infatuated with the movie industry and longs to makefilms. What was theinspiration for her.Is she basedon a dancer or actress of the time?
I’d studied Bharata Natyam as an undergrad at Wesleyan from a disciple of the legendary Balasaraswati and found it thrilling. So, when I decided Jaya would have a twin, I imagined her to be a dancer because I loved the dance and was familiar with a beginner’s practice. Later, I spoke to a professional dancer for deeper knowledge of the art. Also, somewhere in the back of my mind was a story my mother had told me about a college friend whose sister was the actress Bina Rai. When Bina Rai came to campus once, all the girls rushed to take a look and were dazzled by her beauty. Only in revisions did it occur to me to make the connection between Kamlesh and Bina Rai explicit. I decided she
would be inspired by Bina Rai in her most famous role as the dancer Anarkali and feel emboldened in her secret quest for stardom by an actress who comes from a respectable family like her.Though India is mad for the movies, which are full of song and dance, actresses used to be denigrated as women of ill-repute, since some did come from courtesan backgrounds in the early years of film. The culture prized a woman’s modesty, so public performance was stigmatized as shameful. Bina Rai bridged the gap between stardom and respectability, which reassures Kamlesh she can do the same.
Inside Voices/Jeffrey: You make an art of describing Jaya's paintings. Is she based on a real painter,and do any ofthepaintings exist?
Jaya grew out of my passion for visual art. If I hadn’t been a writer, I would have loved to become a painter. Creating her was also an act of defiance. During my year working at Bombay magazine, I covered the art scene and met a longtime gallerist who’d witnessed the birth of the modern art movement in 1947, the same year as independence, with the founding of the Progressive Artists Group. He recalled them as a band of poor, unruly, contentious but extremely talented painters, though they were big names by the time we spoke in the 80s. I asked him if there had been any women artists in the group and he flatly said no. There
Robert Gwaltney & Jeffrey Dale Lofton introduce Parul Kapur
were no women artists at the time. A couple of years later in New York, as I contemplated writing my novel, I wondered, what if there had been one bold woman?
Recently it was discovered there was a woman artist who exhibited with the Progressives at their first show, but she soon abandoned her painting career.
Inside Voices/Robert: I’m paraphrasing, but Jaya observes, “In medicine, you remove yourself from the person so that you can focus on the illness. In painting, you take a step back from the work so that you can find your way more deeply into your subject.” How does Jaya navigate this in the almost double life she leads?
Medicine is the vocation her father chooses for her since she’s an excellent student, and he has full authority over his children’s lives. When the book opens, Jaya is a first-year anatomy student, dissecting cadavers and witnessing the suffering of countless patients at her teaching hospital. You haven’t seen suffering at its most graphic until you’ve walked into an Indian government hospital that treats the poor. By nature she’s an emotionally intense person, so she’s overwhelmed by everything she sees.
A doctor has to keep a certain distance from the patient to maintain the clarity needed to treat them. Jaya is not able to pull back from the people she’s learning to diagnose. She falls into their suffering with them, she’s horrified and haunted by the dead bodies
she dissects. Even when I researched medical student life in Bombay in the 1980s, the bodies the students dissected weren’t highly processed as they are today. They were soaked in Formalin but otherwise looked fully human laid out on the table. Jaya comes home and expels these images on canvas. The stepping back occurs when she’s in the flow of painting and gains control over the picture. She’s able to stop, look it over, and decide how to proceed. In that moment, she’s both inside and outside the image, achieving an objectivity she’s incapable of in the wards amid other people’s pain.
Inside
Voices/Robert: What's next for you?
I’m revising a new novel about a young man struggling against the legacy of British corruption in India. They continued to dominate the economy long after independence and he ends up fighting white-collar crime at a large British company and later at a family firm. He becomes a whistleblower with devastating consequences on his marriage and family. One of the few options left to him is immigration. It’s a specific story from my family history, but I hope it illustrates the broader connection between colonial rule’s wrecking of India and the flight of Indians away from that wreckage toAmerica.
"This is a beautiful exploration of the hardships endured by women artists."— Publishers Weekly, starred review
Inside the Mirror:A Novel Parul Kapur
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MOUNTAIN MAGIC with ANN HITE
The Georgia Girl
*Drawing of Lucille Frank by Jerry Hite
The Georgia Girl
As of this writing, my first real nonfiction book—I don’t count the memoir because that is my story—will be released into the world in two weeks. The experience is much the same as when my first book was published. Writing nonfiction about a famous historical event is intimidating to say the least, but the story of Lucille Selig Frank is close to my heart. My attachment to this story is somewhat unusual.
On August 5, 1915, my granny lost her mother, Asalee Redd Hawkins, to a head injury inflicted by granny’s father, Henry Lee Hawkins, when he pushedAsalee out of their Model-Tgoing down the road. Granny was six years old. Twelve days later she watched Leo M. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta some forty-five miles away, ride by in the back of a ModelT car, one of six. What she witnessed was the vigilantes who kidnapped Leo from the state prison in Milledegville, Georgia taking him to Marietta where they planned and did lynch him. The day was August 17, 1915, 110 years ago. Henry Lee gathered Granny and her siblings for a trip to Marietta.
Granny did not witness the actual lynching. The only people
present for this killing was the vigilantes and a Blue Ridge Circuit Judge, Newt Morris, who was well know in Granny’s hometown of Cumming, in Forsyth County. Judge Newt Morris presided over the trial of Ernest Knox and Oscar Daniell—two AfricanAmerican teenagers found guilty of murdering Mae Crow in 1912. Judge Morris sentenced them to hang on very little evidence. This trial was closely followed by Atlanta newspapers just as Leo M. Frank’s murder trial was covered in 1913.
Leo M. Frank was found guilty of Mary Phagan’s brutal murder in the National Pencil factory on April 26, 1913. Leo was the last person to see Mary alive that day when she picked up her pay. Leo was sentenced to death by a jury of twelve white men, but Governor John Slaton commuted this death sentence to life in the state prison because he was convinced the evidence didn’t show he was the killer.This enraged many who believed Leo was guilty and a plan was hatched by several lawmakers from Cobb County, Georgia to make sure Leo got what they believed was justice. By the time Granny arrived on the scene, the lynching party was long gone. In their place was the good citizens who came out to Marietta to celebrate the lynching of Leo Frank by seeing his body hanging from a tree. Granny was one of the many children brought out to view his body. A thousand people came to the piece of property owned by former Cobb County sheriff William Frey, who was believed to be the man who tied the hangman’s noose.
When I was nine years old, Granny told me the story of the day she saw Leo hanging from the tree with blood running down his nightshirt from his reopened throat wound. She went into detail about how this lynching took place and at the end of the story, she told me that Leo’s last known words was for his wedding ring to be returned to Lucille, his beloved wife. This was the part of the story that stuck with me more than anything else. I imagined Lucille receiving the wedding ring of her husband.Aring she wore for the rest of her life.
I have always said my granny was partly responsible for me
becoming a writer even though she didn’t live long enough to know I became a published author. It was her stories laced with mountain magic that tangled inside of me urging me to tell them. The story of Lucille was no different. At first, I thought I would write Lucille as a historical fictional character. While researching in 2013, I realized that no one had written a nonfiction account of Lucille Selig Frank. She so deserved her story to be told. That’s when I decided to write a nonfiction narrative of Lucille and acknowledge the voices of the other women tied in with this horrific story. Women were marginalized in this time of history. Ladies didn’t speak out and say what they thought, but Lucille did. Yet, the newspapers portrayed her as hysterical and weak like most women were represented. The more I researched, the more I found about the strong women in Lucille’s family. Then I considered the women on Mary Phagan’s side. These women had strength we rarely find now. Yet, often in the newspapers, their remarks, especially Fannie Coleman’s—Mary’s mother—were found on page six or seven of the newspapers.
And now as I look at the finished book, bound with Lucille in all her finery and Leo as a ghostly image in the background, I wonder if Granny knew what I would do? Was it her intention for me to stew about this story and others she passed to me until I turned them into books?
Granny was a hardy reader and understood the power of the written word.And maybe that was her magic, dear readers. Maybe she taught her granddaughter through storytelling how history
repeats itself, and we each have a responsibility to try to keep this from happening.
Now, maybe my readers believe the mountain magic in this piece is Granny telling her stories and dear readers, you would be right, but there is more. When the book was finished and in the hands of my publisher, a man named Mike Weinroth found me through a bookseller, which I can assure you was not an easy task. Mike knew Lucille’s great nephew and wanted the two of us to meet.
Can you see the hand of mountain magic?
I met with Chuck Marcus in early 2025. He told me stories about Lucille because he could remember her quite well since he was thirteen when she died in 1957. He showed me what Lucille was like when she grew older. What a gift. But that’s not the only gift he passed to me. The day I met with Chuck, I was shown what could be—it has not been proven—a gold wedding band he inherited from Lucille. The proof that this ring belonged to Leo is still being researched, but something deep inside me whispered it was the real deal. Holding this ring was life changing as a writer. Ah, but that is not all dear readers.
That afternoon, I left with Lucille’s writing desk. Can you imagine what a gift this was? Each day since I received it, I sit at her desk and write. This was a mountain magic moment, my readers.
Lucille became a quiet, private woman after Leo was lynched. I worried from the beginning of this project I might be invading her
privacy, and she wouldn’t have liked that. When that desk became mine, I felt her smiling as if she were saying, good job, good job. Lucille became more to me than a character in history. I lived with her stories for ten years of researching and writing. I dare anyone to read this story and not understand how important it is to the world we live in today. It’s relevant to what we watch on the news and read in the papers.
Lucille spoke one more time to the press in the fall of 1915 about Leo’s lynching. One of the things she said was “I am a Georgia girl…” This quote became the title of the book. My heart will always be in this story, and I’m sure I haven’t written the last word on the subject.
Embrace the mountain magic. It’s really there at work.
Lucille’s writing desk
Leo and Lucille Frank 1909
For Sale
Jeff Clemmons
The table is mahogany. Rectangular. Distressed in places. It is an unexpected find on a sidewalk outside an antique store in Darien. Six chairs, two with broken lyre backs, and a leaf. But the $150dollar-steal is too good to pass on. Warren snatches it off the concrete and loads it onto his lopsided, busted old Ford before the salesclerk tills the money.
Within a few months, the table is stripped bare of its former history and stained and shellacked against a new one. The lyres are restrung – courtesy of his woodworking old man – and the bronze leg end caps are buffed to shine like fool’s gold.An altar Warren is sure to write at. His new girlfriend thinks so, but she isn’t to be trusted.
Three months past six, give or take, andWarren uses the altar for the first time. Setting his baby girl in a basket on one end, he picks up a pen and sets it to paper:
“For sale: Duncan Phyfe table, leaf and six chairs. Diapers needed. $175 OBO.”
Jeff Clemmons is a cofounder of M’ville, an Atlanta-based writing salon. In addition to writing two books – Rich’s: A Southern Institution and Atlanta’s Historic Westview Cemetery – and a screenplay, he, along with three others, was nominated for an Emmy Award for producing Georgia Public Television’s “Rich’s Remembered.” He is currently working on a biography of avant-garde novelist Frances Newman.
Dear Tooth Fairy
Celia Miles
To paraphrase a seventeenth metaphysical poet (can you tell I’m not your usual six-year-old correspondent?) some folks “a forward motion love, but I by backward steps would move…” into the realm, not of death, but dreams, dreams of you and Santa Claus, and Mama Nature, and all entities that create and foster the illusion of a forgiving and rational world.
Give me again the belief gleaned from wiser adults that if I am “good” (no definition required) and play by the rules, I will be rewarded. Bring me faith that if I follow a childlike path of cause and consequence, something positive will result. Give me the simple mindedness to think: If I behave thus and thus, long approved by moralists who ought to know, then surely such and such will occur.
In other words, dear tooth fairy, in case you’re losing my drift, renew my expectation that something, somebody, something out there sees what I do and pays attention. If I risk, let’s say, a tooth under my pillow, let me believe it’s worth the hope. It’s that faith in what’s unseen that prepares a child for the growing up; it’s not
intellectual questioning that gets him or her ready. That comes, but its grandparent-predecessor is faith that step two follows step one.
So now, dear tooth fairy, from you I don’t need a dime or a dollar. What I need is the assurance that you’re there, you and all you represent. And for that I’d gladly leave you my teeth, capped and bridged as they are.After all, they can be replaced. But I’m not sure you can be.
Celia Miles, a retired community college instructor, is the author of twelve novels (romance, cozy mystery, historical fiction, maybe "literary," ) and co-editor of four women writers' anthologies. Her latest novel is Eight Nights at the Harris Hotel, set in the Outer Hebrides.
DEAR
Venus and Chenille:AGirl’s Guide toArrival
Cindy Sams
Summer 1973
The Toronado crunched into the driveway near sunset. Our new home looked tired, like it had been washed and worn without ever being ironed. Squat, flat-roofed, mud-colored, it slouched behind a few scraggly bushes that passed for landscaping.
We’d come all the way from Macon, Georgia to Benson, Arizona that summer, dropped into the desert like stray seeds, only to face disappointment at the start.
No porch swing. No porch. Crabgrass and pigweed stood in for a lawn. In the growing dark, this house looked like all the others built on this side of town, sad and a little ashamed of itself.
We hadn’t been used to anything better, but we had hoped for something different. Bobby looked at me like he didn’t want to get out of the car. His eyes asked: Is this it?
Mine answered, Yeah. I guess so.
We grabbed our bags and followed the grown-ups inside, our
arms full and our heads down.The screen door slammed behind us, and two poodles—Cricket and Beaumont—tore into the room, jumping and yapping like windup toys on speed. One ash-gray, one floofy black. Both out of their ever-loving minds.
Cricket peed on the floor by my new cloth suitcase, a dainty thing covered in hot pink flowers. I said nothing as the puddle spread. Someone would clean it up later, I figured.
“How do you like it?” Mama asked. Her bouffant wig sat crooked on her head, teetering to the left like it had lost all faith in Aqua Net. She pursed her lips, hands on hips, bracing for criticism. I scanned the living room for something to compliment, but my eyes didn’t know where to light first.
Mama had gone full-on 1970 with her decorating: shag carpet up to our ankles, avocado green on anything that didn’t move, and a mineral oil lamp by the front door that oozed tacky charm. Inside the lamp, a statue of Venus posed like a naked hostage in a slowdrip waterfall.
She had one plastic arm raised and the other on her hip like she was about to sass somebody. The oily stuff around her two-foot form slithered up and down in golden drips. This must be what Vegas showgirls looked like, I thought. Not that I’d ever seen one, except onTVonce, before Grandmama hopped up and changed the channel.
The very thought of that lamp made me blush. We didn’t prance around naked like that back home. Grandmama would have called it tacky. Only hard-down, low-class folks would have something
like that out front for everybody to see.
“Y’all want to see your rooms?” Mama chirped, hurrying away from the avocado fever dream she had set loose on the decorating world. I picked up my suitcase and followed her down the hall. She stopped at the first door on the right and threw it open.
The smell of fresh paint hit me square in the nose.
The walls radiated a shade of soft yellow brighter than lemon but milder than sunshine.An ivory chenille spread covered the double bed, the fabric reminding me of old lady bathrobes and crocheted doilies. Peeling laminate and cockeyed drawers told me the furniture had been bought second-hand. The window lacked curtains, but the Venetian blinds could be opened and closed against the desert heat.
This wasn’t the room I’d imagined on the train, but it would be mine.Afew touches from my dog-eared decorating book, and this space would belong on the cover of Seventeen.
“I love it.” I turned to give Mama a smile, but she had already gone down the hall to Bobby’s room. I wanted to ask about hanging my posters, but that could wait.
After unpacking my clothes—shorts, T-shirts, a Sunday dress or two—I sat down on the bed. A portable clock-radio on the dresser blinked the wrong time. I picked it up and set it back down, unsure about touching something I hadn’t brought with me.
Voices filtered in from the kitchen. Mama fed the dogs to stop their whining. A refrigerator door opened and snapped shut. I picked at the nubby bedspread until a dime-sized hole appeared in
the center. I needed a bathroom but felt too shy to go find one. Peeing on the floor seemed out of the question.
A rap against the hollow brown door. Dale asked if he could come in.
“Yes, sir.”
He stood just inside the doorway and asked if I needed anything.
I stayed polite but cautious: “No, sir.”
Did I like the color of my room?
“Yes, sir.”
Did I want something to eat or drink?
“No, sir.”
Having gotten the pleasantries out of the way, Dale got down to business.
“This is your home now,” he said. “I want you to know how welcome you are here, and how glad I am you came. I hope you’ll want to stay after the summer.”
I kept my hands knotted in my lap. The tension made my fingers ache.
“Thank you, sir.” He left.
I cried with relief. No one had ever said they were glad to have me around. Not right out loud like that. Wiping my eyes, I lay back on the chenille bedspread and wondered what would come next.A strange shift settled in me, although nothing much had happened yet as far as I could tell.
Congratulations on acquiring your new daughter. While not factory-issued, this model has been previously housebroken by maternal grandmother and displays mild obedience when properly motivated. Please read the following instructions carefully for optimal performance:
1. Do not feed after dinner. Weight gain voids the warranty. 2. Praise reading habits occasionally. No more than once per month.
3. Limit emotional displays—except when guests are present, in which case the model should perform affection on command.
4. Voice settings: Southern drawl must be adjusted to neutral or “TV English” when in public.
5. Maintenance tip: Apply White Shoulders perfume to simulate comfort and familiarity.
6. Never acknowledge pre-owned condition or prior attachments. Especially not to Grandmama.
7. Store out of direct light. This model is not designed to shine.
The summer deepened along with the heat. Our suitcases got shoved deep in the back of our closets.
Back home in Macon, summer heat felt wet as a wrung-out towel slung over your head. You could suffocate standing on your own front stoop. Here, folks made a big deal about the temperatures hitting 110 degrees in the shade.
I didn’t get what the big deal was about. The weather was sharp, but at least I could breathe.
It was the first time I knew that heat and families could come in more than one kind. Wet vs dry. Georgia vs Arizona. Mama vs. Grandmama. One swamped you. The other dried you out. Neither let you come up for air without a cost.
I wondered what my friends back home were doing without me. Was Cynthia at the piano or getting ready for another violin lesson? She could play any instrument she picked up.
All I could handle was the FM radio. I reached over and turned it on, trying to drown out the noise of the life I’d left behind.
Bobby made friends at the local pool. I checked out books at the library and considered those my companions.
The librarian always gave my selections the side-eye: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. A Patch of Blue by Elizabeth Kata. The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth.
“These are a little advanced for you, aren’t they?” she asked.
“They’re not as hard as Anna Karenina,” I said. “I read that in the fifth grade. I’m going to the eighth now.”
The librarian frowned, stamped my books, and waved me on. What was her problem? Nobody had ever cared if I read above my grade level. That was one of the few things I was ever praised for.
Mail call.
A letter from Cynthia arrived covered in her usual doodles. Among them: her version of crazy Anthony’s famous flailing arm, fist raised like he was about to slap the dog-mess out of someone or ask to use the bathroom.
She drew those cartoons right on the envelope, alongside a fair picture of our teacher Mrs. Blackburn’s loopy permanent wave. Those scribbles were important. They were a secret code that kept our thoughts safe from prying eyes.
Inside the letter, Cynthia wrote about the latest doings at her house: sister Amelia’s new Sunday dress, the giant zit on her own nose, the morning paper route she ran with her daddy.
“I fell asleep in the car delivering papers again. I think we need a later route.” She always dozed off during their morning chore. I’d filled in for her lots of times when I spent the night over at her house.
The letters made me feel more there than here, like I could still be a part of my old life while living so far away. We shared a name and a whole lot more than that. We were best buddies in a world where friendship was hard to hold onto at any distance.
I wrote back right away. “Cricket is such a wimp. That dog pees
all over the house and trembles like a stick if you look at her … my brother’s room has a black light … the weather is so hot … there’s not a lot to do …“
Layers of squiggles covered my return envelope.Anthony’sarm, our sixth-grade teacher’s hairdo, Cricket shivering in a corner. Mama made me stuff the whole thing into a bigger envelope so the pictures wouldn’t show.
“What will the post office think about all that stuff you two draw?” she asked. “It’s embarrassing.” Her words stung more than I let on. Cynthia’s letters were the one thing that summer that made me feel like myself.
Everything about me embarrassed Mama: my weight, my accent, even my mail. I stopped drawing on envelopes. I used “you all” instead of “y’all.” I chewed the Ayds diet candies she said would curb my appetite.
They didn’t.
Little by little, I shrank myself from the inside out. If I got small enough, she’d be proud of me. But the smaller I got, the more invisible I became.
Cindy Sams is an award-winning journalist and creative nonfiction writer based in Georgia. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Reinhardt University and has received honors from the Georgia Press Association. Her hybrid and narrative memoir work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Mountain Review, Plentitudes Journal, The New Southern Fugitives, and others. Her current project, Reverse Migration, blends traditional and experimental forms to trace a Southern girlhood shaped by upheaval, hunger, and fierce resilience. With an ear for dialogue and a sharp eye for contradiction, she writes stories that dig into the cultural and emotional soil of family, memory, and reinvention.
Transformation
Robin Prince Monroe
It was only out in the farthest upper pasture that fifteen-year-old Emrys could let go and run. When he ran full-out his mind went into a hypnotic flow and the earth could no longer hold him down. Once he lifted off he was no longer aware of the fiery sunshine on his face, or the force of the wind brushing back his wavy, auburn hair. His mind went somewhere else entirely. Only his little, fuzzy, white dog, Zephyr, could bring him out of the trance that gave him so much joy.
Actually, Zephyr, was not a dog at all… well by earth standards he was. He looked like a dog, sounded like a dog, and when around humans, acted exactly like a dog. But in reality Zephyr was Emrys’ guardian, his best friend, and part of an elite force of the Royal Watch from their home planet, Lumin. Zephyr was commissioned to keep Emrys safe and on track, and that was a big charge for such a little nondog.
Emrys and Zephyr snuck out of the house earlier than usual because Mrs. Driscoll had gone to the grocery store, a chore that would take her most of the day since they lived so far out in the
country. Mr. Driscoll was at an auction in a nearby county hoping to pick up a couple of piglets and some chicks to add to the coop population that had dwindled in the past month. He had no idea why his chickens kept disappearing. It quite upset him. So before he left early that morning, he’d taken great care to shore up the fence hoping to solve the problem.
It was a bright summer day with a light breeze out of the north perfect for letting go.And with Zephyr at his side that’s exactly what Emrys did. He let go and ran.As he gathered speed he could feel the tall grass swishing across his legs, and the damp ground cool on the bottom of his tough, bare feet. The air smelled of dirt, rain, and sunshine, but when he rose high above the lacy summer clouds its aroma changed to the sweet freshness of star dust.
“Hold back, Emrys!”, Zephyr’s normally sing-song voice was gruffsincehehadbecomeadog.Hegrowleditout,“Holdback,boy! It’s not time.”
Emrys whole body vibrated when he neared transformation speed. It was almost impossible for him to hold back when that happened, but he had to. There were so many depending on it, and many more who didn’t know they were depending on it. He couldn’t let go. Not yet.
The only way he could hold back was to start thinking about earthly responsibilities; education, farm chores, and the fate of mankind. By the time his mind got to farm chores he was no longer above the clouds and when the weight of mankind’s fate came to mindhe’dhavecrasheddownifhehadn’tbeenholdingontoZephyr.
They just made it. Emrys had gotten home and had finished feeding the last of the barn animals when his parents arrived. Mrs. Driscoll pulled her Rambler in first, with Mr. Driscoll in his ancient, green truck close behind.
For all intents and purposes the sweet couple had become Emrys’parents when they found him in the same field from which he and Zephyr had just returned. He was a tiny newborn when Mrs. Driscoll heard him mewing in the tall grass. When she went over to see what she had heard, she found him tucked in a seagrass basket and wrapped in a silver blanket. Zephyr was standing over him staring up at her with a penetrating stare.
They never talked about it, not even once, but somehow they knew that he was their long-awaited son, and that the furry, white dog was part of the package. They never talked about it, when in the middle of the night they heard a tiny giggle and found him reaching up for the stars that twinkled through the skylight above his crib. They never talked about it, when at only seven months old, he stood up one day and ran across the room, having never walked or even crawled. They never talked about the fact that each morning when Emrys woke up his eyes were a bright aqua-blue and by the time he went to bed they’d be so dark that they were almost black. They never talked about any of it. They just loved. They loved this beautiful, strange child and they loved him with all their hearts. A gift, a blessing, were the words they used when others commented on their lovely fair skinned boy with otherworldly eyes.
In just over a week Emrys would turn sixteen. The Driscolls weren’t exactly sure when his birthday was, so they chose to celebrate it on the date they had found him,April 22.
He never had many friends. He had been verbally bullied most of his short school life. He’d probably have been physically attacked too if it weren’t for Zephyr and his mighty growl. Anyway, he’d already learned all that school had to teach him. So he stayed home and continued to study by reading everything he could get his hands on.
Emrys did, however, manage to find one friend. Danica and her mom lived in the woods in a small, pink house that was down a dirt trail not far from the upper pasture. Danica had been bullied at school too, so she was homeschooled now.
Emrys discovered Danica one day when he was heading home after a practice flight. Fourteen and tiny for her age, he spotted her curly, blonde head in the distance. When he moved closer he could hear her tinkling laugh and was immediately drawn to the shy smile that reminded him of the starlight that he loved so much. Emrys and Danica had both spent most of their growing up safely tucked away and alone except for their animal friends, Zephyr and Silverbird, Danica’s noisy pet bird.
The Driscolls usually celebrated quietly, just the three of them. But they wanted Emrys’ sixteenth to be special, so they invited Danica and her mom down for a picnic and some birthday punch. Zephyr wasn’t happy about that.April 22, Earth Day, was the very day of Emrys’ transformation. Emrys insisted that a celebration
was exactly what he needed before flying into… who knows what… for what reason?
He knew deep down in his heart of hearts, that he had to make the giant leap into Transformation. And he knew, as well as he knew the stars, that if he didn’t, it would be disastrous. But he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, and Zephyr either couldn’t tell him, or didn’t know himself. All Emrys knew was what Zepher had told him. Lumin and Earth were connected, had always been connected. Like twins who can feel each other’s pain the two planets felt the best and the worst of the other, and Earth was in a murky place right now. Truth had become difficult to find on Earth but like stubborn glitter it gleamed in the muddy mess, and as long as it did there was hope.
Earth’s gray air hovered above oceans full of plastic and poison. The minds of most humans were filled with the garbage of confusion and division, and their hearts were smudged with charcoaled hate.And all of this darkness was dimming the light of Lumin. The twin planets were depending on Emrys' flight to bring light.
The week before his birthday Emrys and Zephyr were feverishly working on a plan to get Emrys to the field at just the right moment. And they were making practice flights every time they had a chance to slip away. What they didn’t know is that Danica’s mom sat in her attic window watching and making plans of her own.
When the day finally came, Emrys and Zephyr were confident about the adventure ahead and relieved that their purpose would
finally be realized. All they had to do now was get through this dinner, wait for the Driscolls to settle into their books, then go out to do the evening feed. Everything was ready for the transformation flight. The atoms of earth were trembling in anticipation.
Danica and her mom, Lilith, arrived at the Driscoll’s farm with a basket full of bread, a flask full of berry wine, and a fresh apple pie. Emrys’ parents welcomed them at a weather-worn, outside table.
Mrs. Driscoll ladled beef stew into her best blue and white bowls and passed them around. They each tore a piece of the dark bread that Lilith had baked and slathered it with freshly churned butter. The adults talked of birthdays they remembered, and of happier times. Danica and Emrys were chatting quietly too, while Silverbird and Zephyr eyed each other under the table. They finished the meal with a slice of the delicious apple pie.All except Lilith who claimed she didn’t have a spec of room for it.
By the time dusk settled over the group they had fallen into a deep sleep.All except Lilith, and Zephyr who had realized too late what was happening. He was feigning sleep until he could decide what to do.
When Lilith believed that they were all immobilized she stood up, ran across the yard to the field, and flew up into the sky.Asooty smoke emanated from her. It filled the air with an odious stench and covered the ground with ashes.
It’s all over, Zephyr said to himself. Emrys transformation time
has come and gone. Lilith brought the transformation of darkness. Earth and Lumin are forever shadowed.
They slugged through the rest of summer. Danica stayed at the Driscoll farm, the only mom she ever knew had apparently abandoned her. Fall came in hard, threatening a long, cold winter. Zephyr grew older and grumpier. The farm was failing. There was little to feed the animals and less to eat since dark clouds constantly covered the sun. A heavy sadness and tired spirit hung in the air squeezing out all joy. Emrys escaped the new darkness by climbing into his books after he finished his chores. His friends and family worried as he pulled further and further away from them for worlds that words sketched in his mind. But the end of September brought a few weeks of Indian summer and with the warmth came, for Emrys, a renewed desire to fly.
He wasn’t sure he could anymore, and he was pretty certain Zephyr had grown too old to steady him back to earth. So even if he managed to get up into the air it was more than likely he would crash back down. The most compelling reason not to try was that the whole purpose of it had been thwarted. But he couldn’t shake it. The books were no longer enough to hide from the darkness that was smothering him. Soar or crash he had to try.
On the evening of September 29 Emrys slipped out the back door leaving Zephyr sleeping on the hearth and Danica in the kitchen helping Mrs. Driscoll clean up after their meager supper of bread and tomato gravy. What he didn’t know was that Silverbird was watching.
Emrys’step lightened as he tread up the rocky road to the upper pasture. He had missed flying. He needed to breathe the sweet stardust air above the pewter clouds that now always covered the sky.
Just one more corner and he’d be there. He could hardly wait. When he came around that last bend Lilith was there waiting for him. He could tell it was Lilith, but she had become obese with greed. A blanket of dank, angry hate covered her like sticky molasses. Her once lovely smile had become a frozen snarl.
“Stop! Stop right there! Right now!” Her voice rasped out of her plump, chapped lips.
“Why do you care what I do? You have already won.”
But Lilith stood tall and fat blocking the way. When Emrys tried to go around her she drew a giant knitting needle from her sleeve and lunged for him, aiming for his heart. Just as he was about to be pierced, Zephyr, Silverbird, and Danica appeared out of nowhere and jumped Lilith knocking the giant needle away and pushing her down the steep road. She rolled to the bottom of the hill, her crash echoing with a thud.
With only a nod of thanks, and a new urgency that he didn’t understand, Emrys ran the rest of the way up the road. His friends followed.When together they finally reached the pasture, he turned to them and asked, “Why? Why did you come to help me after I had let you all down?”
Zephyr answered with one word, “Hope”.
Emrys’ eyes filled with tears as he looked back one last time.
Then he turned and ran full-out across the field.
And he let go.
When he did he rocketed up. His head shattered the ashen sky. Glitters of light fell around him like snow, and a rainbow exploded over the world.
Then iridescence returned to Lumin. Brilliant color painted the Earth.And a bath of truth illuminated the universe.
Emrys never returned. He could no longer hold back. Instead, he flew from planet to planet eating up the darkness, transforming it to light.
He had finally, completely, joyfully, let go.
Robin Prince Monroe delights in writing for children; and has authored seven picture books, a middle grade novel, and a chapter book. Recently released titles for grownups include, Ridiculously Easy Crockpot Recipes, Ridiculously Easy Creative Problem Solving, Time Trees and Grandpa’s Knees, and Loss of a Loved One. Her work has also appeared in Guideposts, and Money Matters. www.RobinPrinceMonroe.com
County Fair 1962
Beverly Fisher
Staggering through moldy stables
In 100-degree heat to gawk
At an infinity of monstrous cucumbers, acrobatic squash, Various deformed vegetables and miserable livestock Unaware of their blue-ribbon glory.
Well-worn bleached blondes in two-sizes-too-small
Laura Petrie capri pants
Luring men into a dark tent with hoochie coochie come-hithers, and Unshaven, toothless men taking Precious quarters for rigged shooting galleries, Over-rated freaks, gagging cotton candy, shaky spook houses, and Repetitious rides delivering regurgitating fun.
Daddy, can we go again?
Beverly Fisher is a retired attorney living in Clarksville, TN. She is the author of "Grace Among the Leavings"(Thorncraft Publishing 2013).
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“…that’s what James Wade left me with: wholeness is his idea of happiness.”
Scott Semegran Interviews James Wade
Two Texans Walk Into a Coffee Shop…
On Saturday, July 12th, I drove from Austin to Wimberley, Texas to spend time at Fair Dinkum Coffee Shop with award-winning author James Wade, and to talk about writing and books and his latest novel Narrow the Road, an excellent work of historical fiction that—in my estimation—is somewhere between Huckleberry Finn and The Body by Stephen King. It’s also, I believe, his best novel yet.At this point in time and history around our interview, Texas had just experienced its worst flooding in a while. Initially, we glumly talked about the victims from Camp Mystic in Kerr County and the poor response from political leaders inTexas, but that wasn’t our focus for this interview.We were there in that quaint coffee shop to talk about Narrow the Road, and so much more. Here’s where we started.
Scott Semegran: Let’s talk about your new book, the new novel Narrow the Road. It’s your fifth novel in six years.You’re quite the prolific writer. It’s such a fantastic book. You received your first Publishers Weekly starred review. What was the initial nugget of inspiration for you and this story?
Scott Semegran interviews James Wade
James Wade: I had spent a good deal of time researching East Texas around the Great Depression era for my last novel, Hollow Out the Dark, and even after I’d written the book it still felt like there was more to tell about this time period and this place. So I had my setting, but I wasn’t sure what the story would be. I decided to start in a town I’d always wanted to write about—Manning, Texas. It was a mill town. Now, it’s nothing more than basically a historical marker, but Manning was a thriving mill town in the early 1900s, and my great-grandmother was born there, and so I had always heard of Manning growing up, and how it was purely a company town. That means the company built your house. They stocked the store and the commissary where you spent your wages. There were movie theaters that the company would pay for movies to come in and for performers. So it was really the most laborfocused community. Also, it was segregated. They had whites in one area Blacks in the other. They also had Italians in one area, which I didn’t know there were a ton of Italians in EastTexas in the 1920s. So, I was fascinated by Manning and the way that the town worked, the way they got supplies there on the rail and brought in things like great blocks of ice that took several people to unload off the train. So I had all this interest and background with Manning, and then when I sat down to write, I realized it was going to be a story about this boy’s journey, in both the physical and spiritual sense. So alas, we had to leave Manning pretty early on.
As both a reader and a writer, I love stories where you have a point A and a point B, and then you just go along the path to
something. It’s a lovely metaphor for grander themes, but on a more practical level it kind of keeps the momentum going for the writer. It takes a little bit of the pressure off.You already have some built-in motion happening.
SS: I’ve read all of your novels and I noticed something starkly different with this one. So, unlike your other novels, which have these unrelenting forces coming in from the outside causing the protagonist to do something in particular, whether it’s people from the outside, coming in doing things to them, someone dies, or someone’s making decisions for them. In this novel, that inciting force is coming from within a family and, particularly, the repercussions from William’s father’s decisions. So, can you talk about this change in focus? Because for me, at least having read four of your books before, it was rather a stark difference, and I really became fascinated with the story earlier on because of that difference. Can we talk about that?
JW: With this novel and for this character, William Carter, his circumstances are still dictated by outside forces. He’s in the position he’s in based on a number of things: the Great Depression, failing cotton farm, his mother’s illness and her refusal to be treated by doctors, the choices that his father has made. All of this is outside of his control, certainly. But to your point, every action in the book happens because William makes a decision. First one, then another, and we see him take agency of not just his life but of the plot, and that is very much on purpose to where, from the moment that he makes the decision to leave to the moment that the
book ends, he is the one who was in control of the story. And that is part of the hero’s journey, and it puts him in that light, and it lets the reader be close to him. We see how he agonizes over some of these decisions.
He gets very conflicted about whether he is making the right decisions and that conflict weighs heavy on him as we get deeper into the novel and the characters get deeper into the woods both physically and metaphorically. Hopefully the reader can feel the fear and frustration and hesitation and uncertainty that dogs him at every step. I know I empathize with those emotions. I tend to feel overwhelmed with indecision in just everyday life, but particularly big decisions and important decisions.And so I felt everything that he feels in these different moments of, am I going down the right path, right? And that’s where the title comes from—Narrow the Road. There are so many paths and there are so many ways to live your life, but it feels like there are only a narrow few that will ever work out the way you want.And, of course, you have to figure out for yourself whether that’s actually true. But for the story, I wanted everything to come from William. That way, all the good things were because of him, but also all of the bad things were because of him. He has to wear both of those on his heart for the duration of the novel.
SS: How is it that the stakes for a young-adult protagonist seem so much bigger and so much grander than for adults? I mean, it just seems like the choices they make are just so agonizing. For your adult protagonists, of course, they’re thinking about things,
agonizing about them. But for William, it just seems like it’s on such a grander scale.
JW: Well, do you remember your yard when you were a kid? Is it bigger when you were a kid than when you come back to it as an adult? I think that’s part of it, right? We’re seeing these things through William’s eyes and through William’s eyes, everything is this grand decision. You know, that part of being human is having these unwieldly emotions in general, because certainly as a teenager, you really are stuck, kind of in between boyhood and manhood, and a lot of folks have to grow up quicker than others. And we get that with William. We see where he’s trying to be a man or where he’s trying to make himself taller when he’s talking to the banker. But we also see that he’s just a kid and he’s scared of losing his mom. He wants to go find his father in order to have another adult handle it. It’s a journey towards manhood, yet what he’s really seeking is kind of the ultimate boyhood.
I feel like when I read stories like Sometimes Island (note: he’s referring to the novel The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island by Scott Semegran), when the stakes are presented to the reader through a young person’s eyes, everything just seems more immediate and stressful. Maybe that’s because kids don’t know to act like everything’s cool the way adults do or something. They just they don’t know how to lie to themselves as well as adults do yet. They’ll get there.
SS: I can’t help but compare William’s retreat out west to Jonah
from your underappreciated novel River, Sing Out, his escape down the river and out into the ocean. Hope it’s not a spoiler alert. It came out few years ago, but whatever. I think these novels are cousins in a way. I remember after I read River, Sing Out that I had kind of a bad taste in my mouth because of some of the violence in the book, but I couldn’t escape thinking about Jonah and River hiding in the woods and then Jonah escaping all of that violence by going out to the ocean. So, why do these two young men escape to nature at the end? What is it about both of them that they’ve experienced these traumatic events, these experiences, and then they decide to retreat out into nature? What is it about that, for you as the writer, that seems like the idyllic way to kind of remove themselves?
JW: It works on a lot of levels for me. For one, personally, that’s my escape, is getting away from everyone and everything and getting out into nature on a hike or in the mountains. Or even just in my backyard, in a place that I can be quiet for a little bit. And then, also, I think that it works in terms of a literary device, a literary tool, classic literature, like when you escape to the sea, or when you see water as redemption, or in William’s case, going out west. Think of the Elvish ships in the harbor to take our heroes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy west to Valinor at the end of their journey. So, I think there’s a little bit of that metaphoric nature there. But then, I think most importantly, is that you’ve just had all of these incredibly impactful and even traumatic things happen in both of these novels. How are you supposed to stay? If you’re these
boys and you’ve just undergone all these things, not only do you not want to stay just on like the practical level of, like all this crazy stuff just happened and it’s probably best that you leave. But also in terms of processing, how do you process something if you’re still in it? You’ve got to go somewhere else. Like Larry McMurtry said, he had to go to Virginia to accurately write about Texas. And so, for William, he has to get away from all this before he can really process, not just what happened, but what it means to him and for him. He has this great moment on this mountain that I intentionally mirrored a little bit of Moses on Mount Sinai, and coming to this realization. And I think you need that. I think you need that space. So, I always want to have them get away a little bit, because that’s when I really think they can understand what’s happened to them.
SS: William has a real respect for his mother’s strength and Lena’s survival skills. William’s earliest memory is of his mother comforting him after he hurts his knee (p133) and he’s impressed rather than belittled while witnessing Lena dress a rabbit as well as start a campfire without matches (p211-212). Can you expand on this idea that young men should find comfort and inspiration from strong, independent women in their lives?
JW: Lena is more capable than both boys when it comes to surviving. And William’s mother always contained an element of grace and a strong, comforting nature—even as she is dying. William doesn’t have either of these things. At least not to the
degree that these two women do, but instead of lashing out against that or being wary of it, William understands that these different skillsets are necessary to create wholeness. We all bring different things to the table, and to embrace our varied strengths means to become stronger as a collective. William, Lena, and Ollie’s only shot at surviving this ordeal is to lean on one another. It shouldn’t matter what sex someone is. Strengths are strengths. That said, yeah, the strange notion that boys are supposed to somehow dominate girls is obviously incredibly outdated. A man shouldn’t fear a strong woman unless he’s afraid of being called on his shit and ultimately having to better himself—which I think is likely the case when men are put off by strength and independence in women.
SS: Your description of the Texas landscape is as beautiful and as detailed as ever. Why is this important to you?
JW: For me, as a reader, I love to see that stuff. I think it really brings us into the story more. I can just place myself there and see it in my head better.
So, I like that, and I also like to use natural setting as a character. The kids are not only contending with nefarious characters and with their own desires, but they’re contending with the landscape. I want to really give readers a sense of how claustrophobic it can be when you get in these deep woods or, how tough it can be to manage a river in a boat. It’s just important to me. I think I’m drawn to naturalism as a reader and so, it can’t help but come out
in my writing. I also think it offers—craft wise—writers a chance to develop their own prose style to show folks how they see the world. When I move through the world or move through the woods, I’m noticing these things. I think it’s a great way for writers to express the way that we observe what’s around us.
SS: When I finished this novel, I was really inspired to get back to my own writing. Who’s inspired you lately to get back to the desk and do some writing? Who’s knocked your socks off lately?
JW: Lately? Everybody. (laughs) I just read Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It was so good, it was depressing. Because I just thought to myself, try as I might, for as long as I might, I don’t think I can ever do what she did. I was jealous because it was a great idea. It has a great structure to the novel and I was jealous that I had not come up with something like that first. I think Orbital was the one that really lit the fire under me that I’m gonna have to step up my game. I mean, she’s just won the Booker Prize and that’s leagues from where I am in terms of popularity and publicity, but in terms of being my own best and worst critic, I definitely think that that novel lit a fire, but everybody’s doing great stuff.Andsuch different stuff.
You know what I mean? I was looking at Starman (note: he’s referring to the novel Starman After Midnight by Scott Semegran) the other day. It’s so different than other stuff you’ve done. It’s so different than Orbital, which was so different than Rednecks by Taylor Brown, which is so different than Brother Brontë by
FernandoA. Flores, you know, just take your pick. I’m going back through William Gay’s catalog right now. I just finished The Lost Country. I would say it’s not as good as Provinces of Night, but I would say, it’s just as good of writing. It just isn’t as tight of a story, probably because it was cobbled together after he died. But just going back through his catalog, is he the most unsung, uncelebrated genius of a writer that we’ve ever had? I don’t know, maybe not, because I know who he is, but it just makes me wonder: who’s out there toiling away writing the most brilliant stuff?
SS: I remember after reading Fernando A. Flores’book Brother Brontë and just being like floored that he was swinging for the fences with his metaphors and similes, like they were almost so wacky that at first, I thought, ‘Well, he’s being really brave.’And then I thought, ‘No man, he’s like fucking going for it.’I mean, the book opens up where he’s describing the rain as like big slabs of deli ham hitting the asphalt, and the first thing I thought was ‘What the fuck?’And then, I thought, ‘You know, I can hear that, it makes sense.’And then, I’m like, ‘Why am I not being more like, just fuck it?’It just made me think that his style is nothing like what I do, but also, why not just swing for the fences, all the time?
JW: To be honest with you, Scott, I don’t even know what that would look like for me. This next novel that I’m working on right now, I’m not gonna call it a ‘swing for the fences,’ but I’m definitely trying to stretch a single into a double or something. I’m hitting one in the gap and trying to go for three. It has sci-fi
elements to it. And that’s obviously completely out of my wheelhouse. It’s modern day with sci-fi elements. Other than River, Sing Out, I’ve never even done modern day, let alone anything outside of stark realism. I think most writers who aren’t under the umbrella of generic or trendy fiction—like writers who are trying to create something intimate and singular, as opposed to playing to the market or appealing to the masses—I do believe they swing for the fences just by writing. Fernando does this. Jennifer du Bois, Lindsay Stern, Stewart O’Nan. They all take big swings just by writing at all.
SS: It’s a good segue into something I wanted to talk to you about. According to recent surveys, people are just reading less. The most recent SPPA (Survey of Public Participation in the Arts) survey recently said that only 37 percent of people in the U.S read one novel in the previous year. And that’s the lowest in their three decade history. And then with men, it seems that most men, statistically, are not reading fiction. They’re reading non-fiction, if they’re reading at all. And so there have been articles asking, “Where is the literary man?” The man that would go to the bookstore. He would read novels. Where did this person go? I find it to be a peculiar question because here’s two literary men sitting right here at the table. (both laugh) I read like 30 novels last year. And so, to see a statistic that says that barely anybody read one novel is disheartening. What do you make of that of? We seem to be at a time where people are not looking to fiction for empathy. They’re not looking to fiction to escape, and what do we do with
that, as writers of literary fiction? It’s not the popular genre anymore.
JW: I’ve seen so many articles over the past five years that try to address this question, and I think a lot of the times they try to address it from within the industry. You know, men aren’t reading because, ‘What is there to read?’ I think that the reason that the publishing industry is so geared toward women right now is because women are the ones who have continued to read. I don’t think it’s a chicken and the egg situation. I think that what happened is men stopped reading, and I don’t think it has anything to do with the books that were being written or the authors that were being promoted. I think it has far more to do with things outside of the publishing industry and the publishing industry’s control. I think that you’re competing with video games. You’re competing with the manosphere. I think you’re competing with outside entertainment, but even more so, I think you’re competing with a culture that, for decades now, has promoted a type of antiintellectual masculinity and has said that that is what a man is supposed to be. And ultimately, I think that you’ve rewarded that behavior. And this is me, of course, speaking in generalities. But I’m not in the more refined, liberal bubble that a lot of my peers are. I live in a red town in a red county in a red state. I grew up in a red town in a red county in a red state. I am all too aware of what folks believe qualifies as manly behavior.
SS: I realize that I’m an outlier in Texas. I don’t watch football.
I don’t play first-person shooters. My idea of fun is hanging out with my wife and traveling, reading books, and writing. And it’s frustrating because I feel intelligence should be rewarded. I feel like empathy should be rewarded. And that’s something that we’re offering in our novels, is that here’s a perspective to think about, here’s beautiful language. Here’s maybe a scenario you’ve never been in before. I’ve always considered myself a feminist, and I’m frustrated with the state of the way things are in Texas right now and in the U.S. And that type of masculine figure that you’re explaining, the anti-intellectual figure, is repellent to me. I feel like there’s more to offer men than stepping back intellectually, you know?And just being primordial.
JW: You’re preaching to the choir. I think there was a time in this country where the more intellectual man was revered and rewarded, and I think we’ve gotten away from that as well. I don’t know. I mean, I sound like an old man right now. I sound like ‘the culture is deteriorating.’And maybe it is? I don’t know, but it really just seems like the reasoned voices are drowned out by the loud ones. It seems like the kind and empathetic men are pushed aside by the seemingly strong and tough.Which, of course, we know that they are that way because they are the least secure in who they are. They are the most scared.
I don’t know, man, I think fearful, reactionary masculinity is something that went unchecked for so long and now we’re trying to deal with it. I don’t think we have a grasp on even what it is, let alone how to fix it.
SS: That’s one thing I noticed that we have in common, that although our writing styles are very different and our books, story wise are very different, one thing I noticed right away is we’re both asking similar questions concerning, ‘What makes a man? What’s considered masculine? What are the repercussions of violence? Why is it that this just keeps perpetuating over and over again? How come men can’t just step out of it and talk about their feelings? Why did we grow up with these men that wanted to scare us to death, scare us into submission, maybe hit us? Do these kind of things and then expect that to be role-model behavior?’We both had overbearing fathers. My father was an overbearing guy, got that from the military. You’ve been very open about your relationship with your father. But this is taught behavior for these people, right? And why is it that we can’t just move forward? But I have noticed that you and I have both talked about this, thematically, in our work. What have you gotten from exploring masculinity where you grew up? How do you think you’ve grown exploring this thematically in your work? Has it made you a better father? Has it made you a better husband? Do you feel like you’re a better friend and a more well-rounded person for it?
JW: I don’t know that I have grown from that side of it. I think any time that you put something under the microscope and really dissect it and take a look at every part of what makes you “You,” I think that there is a certain self-awareness that comes with that. I don’t think it necessarily always equals growth.And for me, I think I’m still in the ‘being aware of things’ phase. I want to grow.
Perhaps I have.And perhaps I will continue to. I think that looking at my past, looking at the role masculinity or toxic masculinity has played, the role that rural Texas has played, the role that bigotry has played, the role that child abuse has played, the role that complex PTSD and panic attacks has played, any of that stuff—I think you just have to be aware of all the things that make up the operating system that’s inside you that is essentially making decisions. If you’re aware of the things that make up who you are, that’s when you can actually start to grow and change. Right now, I’m still kind of just in the trying to be aware of all the different parts of myself.
SS: How important is your wife Jordan to your writer life? This is something I wanted to ask because you don’t really hear a lot about partners. Doesn’t necessarily have to be spouses, just someone in your life. It could be a romantic partner. It could be a spouse. It could be a parent. It could be a neighbor. But as a creative person, I know she supports you. How important is she in your writer life?
JW: The limit does not exist there. It’s invaluable. There’s nobody that has supported me the way that she has from day one. What Jordan has done is supported me while also pushing me. Without that, I mean, if I go back and look at all the waypoints of the last 15 years of my life, every big decision that was a net positive for my life was either influenced or absolutely directed by Jordan. So, if something were to go bad between us, and she
realizes she could find a way cooler, richer husband, and left me. I would be devastated, but I would also still say in interviews, ‘without my ex-wife, who’s now married to a hot billionaire, without her, I would not have ever been able to be a writer.’I mean, that’s on the record as true as could ever be, no matter what happens in the future. She’ll always get that credit.
SS: There’s definitely a demarcation in my life from before my wife, Lori, to after we married as far as my writing quality and output. Before I married my wife, my writing was just garbage. My writer life was garbage. What I was producing was garbage, and then afterwards, in fact, the first few years we were married, I wasn’t writing at all because I had stopped before I met her. And told her that I missed it, so she, for the first few years we were together, she didn’t know me as a writer, really. I mean, she knew I had written books. She knew I had written things. But then once, I kind of got that little nudge from her, she said, you should start writing again. I’ve just been more prolific than ever because she offers to not only read my work, but she edits my work. She goes to book festivals with me. She encourages me to do some of these things, and it’s just an invaluable part of my life, where she’s giving me free reign to do that, because there have been times in my life where I didn’t have free rein to do that. I’d have people saying, ‘Why are you doing that?You’re not going to make money at that. What’s the point of writing books?’ These are things that people have said to me, to my face. Why are you doing that? And my wife has said to me, you should be doing that. So, I imagine
Jordan in your life is like that with you.
JW: Oh yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, man. When you have that kind of support in general, but especially from a person that you care about, and like you said, it could be any type of relationship, but a person that you care about and that you care what their opinion is. There are a lot of people that can support you, and that’s very nice. But I don’t need their support in order to do this. It’s significant when it comes from a person who is one of the people that you’re closest to. It’s not just about support, it’s about how to support. It’s not just about help, it’s about the help you need in the way that you need it.
SS: What is it about Narrow the Road that is different for you from the previous books? Because I’ve noticed not only the difference that we talked about earlier about the forces being internal in the family instead of external forces coming in, but there’s also a confidence there. I would say that now, to me more than any of your other books, that this is you emerging as a storyteller. Rather than just a writer or novelist who maybe is atmospheric, or maybe reminds people of other writers in style, but that there’s a real story here, and a confidence in the storytelling, to me, that’s different than before. Why do you think that is?
JW: I don’t know, but I’m glad you think that.
SS: I think when someone says you’re a storyteller over being just a writer, storytelling to me is like you’re hypnotizing people,
right? There’s something so compelling about it, and I find that in this story. What do you think that is?
JW: I think a percentage of it is that I got back to the travel story. I just think that as a reader, I enjoy that so much. Journeying to me is like the ultimate symptom of humans. Whether it’s a physical journey or emotional, spiritual journey. To have a novel where I knew right off the bat, we’re in a place, and we’re going to go to another place—that does give you a little bit of confidence because it takes a little bit of the pressure off. You still have to figure out everything that happens in the middle, and you have to figure out what you want to happen with characters and how you want things to end up. But in terms of where is the story going? Well, at least you have a little bit of an answer, even if it’s only like the physical place. It’s going to this place. I think that freed me up a little bit to tell the story, to have more confidence in the choices that that I was making.
That’s the answer I would give you just sitting here because, honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think writers try to answer every question, a lot of times, even if they don’t actually have the answer. I think that what I said could be a percent of it. But I don’t really know. At the end of the day, I’m just glad you liked it. I’m glad some other early readers have seemed to like it. But now it’s time for me to turn the page and move on to the next book and try to do it all over again and hopefully make it a little better each time.
SS: Now that you’ve had five books out, what is your
relationship to things like reviews and what people say about your work?
JW: I think I learned just with the first one—I don’t think it took five—to just tune most of that stuff out. I’ve been called great, I’ve been called terrible. Neither of those things help me write. Bad reviews are a part of the business. Being overly praised is too. Everything is so reactionary. So subjective. I’ve won some nice awards that I’m incredibly honored to have won. But those awards were based on judges, and those judges are just people, and that’s just subjective. I got lucky that the right people at the right time were reading the right book. That’s not to downplay accomplishments or to downplay criticism, which can sometimes be helpful. But for the most part, I just tune all that shit out. It doesn’t help me get better at or execute my craft.And that’s all that I’m concerned with.
SS: Percival Everett said recently, when someone was asking about him winning the Pulitzer Prize, he said ‘Next week, it would have been somebody else.’ He kind of looks at it like, ‘I won the book award lottery that day.’
JW: That’s a really good way to look at it. Next week, it would have been someone else. That guy’s kind of smart.
SS: What’s up next for you?
JW: I’ve got one year left of grad school. During that time, I’m working on a sixth novel and I’m terrified of it because it’s unlike
anything I’ve done before. It deals with astrophysics and a little bit of sci-fi and just things both philosophically and tangibly that I haven’t dealt with in fiction before. We’ll see what happens. I mean, we talked about swinging for the fences. I’m gonna swing out of my shoes. Let’s just hope I make contact, because if not, it’s gonna be a very embarrassing swing and a miss. But, we’ll see.
SS: Wow, I look forward to science fiction from James Wade. Finally, I have a speed round of questions. Short answers only. Faulkner or Steinbeck? If you had to choose just one.
JW: Steinbeck.
SS: Best unleaded beverage: hop water or decaf coffee?
JW: Neither. Those both sound terrible.
SS: Best way to learn fiction writing: grad school or reading books?
JW: Reading.
SS: Best writing location: anAirstream in West Texas or a cabin in the Hill Country?
JW: Oh God.Airstream in West Texas.
SS: Who is smarter: Trump or a horned lizard?
JW: Horned lizard.
SS: If you were stuck on a deserted island and you could only
have one book, would it be something by Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry?
JW: McCarthy, and not even close by the way. McMurtry would not even crack the top 20.
SS: Who has the filthier potty mouth: Kimberly Garza or Stacey Swann?
JW: Oh, Kim Garza. She’s been known to inscribe books with “fuck James Wade.” And I don’t know how to explain that in a context that makes it endearing and shows that we’re good friends—but it is and we are. And apparently, I need to hang out with Stacey Swann more.
SS: What’s better living: city living or country living?
JW: God. Country living, by the slimmest of margins. Whatever the margin is between McCarthy and McMurtry, it’s the opposite of that.
SS: If you weren’t writing books, then what other profession would you be doing?
JW: Breaking rocks. I want to be like John Henry, hammering railroad ties.
SS: What is your idea of happiness?
JW: Wholeness is my idea of happiness.
And that’s what James Wade left me with: wholeness is his idea of happiness.After that, we hugged it out. I hopped back in my car and drove back to Austin where my wife and daughter were waiting for me. I thought about Steinbeck and Narrow the Road and all the things we discussed about writing and books and publishing and why the hell men aren’t reading more fiction. It was a lot. But wholeness?That’s it right there.That’s whatit’s allabout.
Scott Semegran is an award-winning writer of ten books. BlueInk Review described him best as “a gifted writer, with a wry sense of humor.” His latest book, Starman After Midnight, is a quirky novel-in-stories about two beer-drinking neighbors who team-up to track down a mysterious latenight interloper terrorizing their middle-class neighborhood. His nine previous books include The Codger and the Sparrow (Discovery Prize winner for Fiction in the 2024 Writers' League of Texas Book Awards), The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island (first-place winner for MiddleGrade/Young Adult fiction in the 2021 Writer’s Digest Book Awards), and To Squeeze a Prairie Dog (winner of the 2020 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Gold Medal for Humor and winner of the 2019 Texas Author Project for Adult Fiction). He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English.
"A poignant, lyrical, often funny coming-of-age odyssey set in the East Texas wilds of a century ago. James Wade has established himself as one of the Lone Star State's best young novelists, and this tale of Dust Bowl grit and adolescent discovery is a mustread for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Charles Portis, or Paulette Jiles."
--
Taylor Brown, Southern Book Prize winner and author of Rednecks
Narrow the Road James Wade
"An encouraging tale of neighborliness and camaraderie in the face of the unknown. A big-hearted, often amusing tale of the weirdness of suburbia."
—
Kirkus Review
Starman After Midnight: A Novel-in-stories
Scott Semegran
CLAIRE CONSIDERS
She Had To Die by
Rebecca Barrett
She Had To Die by
Rebecca Barrett
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro
“Four people are dead. There has to be a reckoning. You know that.”
So speaks Hugo August, a Vietnam-hardened Mobile police detective, as he and his partner, Junior Knight, unravel a tangle of murders in small-town Spanish Fort, Alabama. Grounded in authentic late-sixties detail, these deaths form the backbone of a gritty, gripping story in Rebecca Barrett’s “She Had To Die” (2025). After a twisty, intriguing plot, the reckoning is surprising yet utterly believable—just as Barrett skillfully delivered in the first book in this series, “The Rat Catcher” (2023).
A taut historical police procedural with a noir gloss, “She Had To Die” opens strong: a well-connected, beautiful woman, known to be “friendly,” is found shot dead in a shabby motel. The few people on site unconvincingly deny hearing gunfire. The victim, Ruby Stanton, is young and undeniably beautiful. Yet, as Junior observes: “[T]o be shot through the heart in a dingy motel in noman’s land. That was tawdry.”
Hugo and Junior, friends since childhood, are pulled from the Mobile Police Department to investigate because Ruby was a close relative of the local chief of police, Buzz Stanton. Their involvement raises suspicions—Hugo begins to wonder if they’re
Rebecca Barrett
being set up as scapegoats. “Something heavy was about to go down and Hugo and Junior would be in the crosshairs.” Or perhaps they’re a smokescreen, as Buzz and a rejected, love-sick deputy named Boo hint at vigilante justice.As the body count rises, Hugo and Junior ask: “Was Ruby Stanton the unknown curse? Or was she cursed?”
The title stems from Junior’s harsh exchange with Alma, a woman embittered by her unrequited love for Boo. “Don’t you see? She had to die.As long as she was alive, no one could ever be happy.” With those words, Alma becomes one more potential suspect—along with Boo, Ruby’s married lover or his wife, and several others.
Readers meet Ruby gradually, just as Hugo and Junior do, through the gossip, confessions, and half-truths of townspeople. In a place like Spanish Fort, everyone knew—or claimed to know— Ruby. Much of what’s said is malicious, but Hugo and Junior agree: whoever Ruby was, she didn’t deserve to die in a dingy motel room.
A college dropout,—whether from grief over her father’s death or too much partying depends on who’s telling the story—Ruby worked in a law firm. She kept flexible hours, did little actual work, but was romantically involved with her boss, an attorney willing to create a scandal and an economic disaster by divorcing his shrewd wife for Ruby. That messy situation makes both husband and wife suspects. But the list of potential killers only grows as more murders occur.
Though rumors paint Ruby as frivolous and promiscuous, another portrait emerges through Nelson, her childhood neighbor. Born with brain damage, Nelson never matured mentally, and Ruby became his only true friend. Her apartment is filled with children’s books she read aloud to him. Nelson’s role is both pivotal and poignant, complicating the view of Ruby as just a “party girl” and revealing her tenderness and loyalty.
Even with its fast-moving plot, “She Had To Die” is ultimately character-driven, anchored by Hugo and Junior’s deep friendship. Their bond—protective, brotherly, and sometimes imbalanced— gives the book its heart.
Hugo, a Vietnam veteran, suffers from PTSD, which Barrett portrays with realism and sensitivity. He also bears scars from childhood as an orphan and from an unattainable love. Junior, the softer of the two, feels guilty for not serving in Vietnam. He lives with his doting grandmother, whose warmth provides welcome contrast to the novel’s darker turns.
A third key character, Evie, a forensic team member introduced in “The Rat Catcher,” rounds out the trio. While she doesn’t get as much page time here, Evie is a sympathetic character caught in an unrequited love triangle: Junior loves Evie, Evie loves Hugo, and Hugo loves Bebe. As Hugo reflects, “The heart wanted what the heart wanted. Junior wanted Evie, Evie wanted Hugo, and Hugo wanted Bebe. No one was happy because love was cruel that way. And now, Alma wanted Boo who had wanted Ruby who had wanted… Who had Ruby wanted?”
CLAIRE CONSIDERS She Had to Die by
Rebecca Barrett
Readers don’t need to start with “The Rat Catcher” to enjoy “She Had To Die,” but doing so enriches the experience. Together, the novels build a layered world of history, mystery, and flawed but memorable characters.
All told, “She Had To Die” is an outstanding novel—intricate, immersive, and compulsively readable. It’s the kind of book that keeps readers up past midnight, turning pages hungrily. Barrett avoids clichés, delivering fresh, compelling storytelling and characters readers will care about long after the last page.
Rebecca Barrett writes across genres, from historical fiction such as “Road’s End,” to cozy mysteries, post-apocalyptic tales (as Campbell O’Neal), children’s books, and Southern short stories. With Susan Tanner, she co-authors an ongoing cozy mystery series, including the recent “Red, White, and Blue Callahan.” A lifelong storyteller and avid reader, Barrett lives in SouthAlabama. Visit her at https://rebeccabarrett.com/.
Finding Inspiration in Unexpected Places
THE WRITER’S EYE
with Susan Beckham Zurenda and guest author, Rhonda McKnight
This month we delve into a rich topic for inspiration: family history. Award-winning author Rhonda McKnight explains how the idea for her first Lowcountry Southern women’s novel originated from her parents’family stories.
Rhonda and I met a couple or more years ago when we were invited to participate on an author panel at the Mount Pleasant branch of the Charleston Library System in South Carolina. Shortly after we met, I read Rhoda’s novel The Thing About Home and was transported with her protagonist Casey Black—a disgraced social media influencer in search of refuge and connection to a family she’s never known—to the beautiful South Carolina Lowcountry on a three-hundred-acre farm.
Rhonda was a 2024 Christy Award finalist and received the Emma Award for The Thing About Home.She has also written several other award-winning bestsellers, including Unbreak My Heart and An Inconvenient Friend. She writes book club fiction and romance about complex characters in crisis. Here, she talks about how family stories inspired her current novel:
I'm a writer and anything you say or do may end up in my next book.
There are T-shirts, mugs, and certainly no shortage of good-
THE WRITER’S EYE with guest author, Rhonda McKnight
natured jokes that allude to the idea that writers write about people they know and sometimes themselves. I am guilty, because although I write fiction and make up most of the events in my books, my inspiration of late has come from people who no longer live…my ancestors. For me, storytelling has become both an act of remembrance and a way to honor the resilience and beauty of the people who came before me.
But no one could have ever convinced me that I would be telling these kinds of stories. I was a romance author who moved to South Carolina to begin caregiving with my mother. I came up with the idea for my first Lowcountry Southern women’s fiction novel while listening to my parents tell stories about our family—stories I never learned when I was growing up.
The past and present speak to one another through dual timelines in my current novel, Bitter and Sweet. It is the story of two estranged sisters who because of their desire to honor their grandmother’s request, work together to reopen their family’s eighty-seven-year-old restaurant. Along the way they learn complicated truths about themselves and their family history. Nearly half of the book takes place during the years 1915-1938, so readers spend time with their great-great-grandmother, Tabitha Cooper, as she’s attempting to build the family’s restaurant business in Charleston, South Carolina.
Bitter and Sweet’s contemporary story was inspired by the death of my maternal grandmother, who passed away during childbirth. The high Black Maternal mortality rate in the United States has
received media attention over the last couple of years; not nearly enough, but more than in the past. I’ve published twenty-seven books. It was time for me to write a story that addressed this issue and the heartbreak it leaves families to grapple with.
The historical thread of the book came from another remarkable woman in my family: one of my aunts. She was like a mother to my mother, and therefore a grandmother figure to me. This aunt, much like the character Tabitha, saved her own life through her skill in the kitchen.
Stories like Tabitha’s matter because so many of us have women in our histories whose talents—cooking, sewing, quilting, growing food, canning vegetables—literally kept our families alive during the Great Depression. I always say recognizing and honoring that resourcefulness and resilience is my reasonable service.
Many authors set stories in the Lowcountry, but there are relatively few Black authors telling these tales, despite the fact that Black people make up over twenty-seven percent of the Lowcountry’s population—almost twice the national average. The descendants of enslaved Africans, including the Gullah people, still live on the land where their ancestors were freed from enslavement. They continue carrying on traditions and language that have survived centuries. Yet their voices are underrepresented in Southern literature about the region. I believe in the power of fiction to keep those stories alive in a way that feels as real as sitting at the kitchen table with an elder telling you how things used to be.
THE WRITER’S EYE with guest author, Rhonda McKnight
Though I will never deny being a Jersey girl at heart, South Carolina has folded around me like a warm and welcome blanket. I am strengthened and inspired by my family’s history, the land, and the ancestral foods that connect me to generations past. Every pot of perlou rice, every sweetgrass basket, every hymn sung in church is an echo of something older than me. I want my books to be that kind of conversation: intimate, rich with detail, and filled with love for my ancestors. Their stories are my inheritance. And as long as I’m able, I will keep telling them.
THE
“A meditation on what it means to be family. To love beyond dislike. To mend seemingly broken bridges and forge a bond beyond blood.”
— Nikesha Elise Williams, 2X
Emmy Award-Winning Producer and Author of Beyond Bourbon Street
Bitter and Sweet: A Lowcountry Novel
Rhonda McKnight
2-year/60-hour Program
Study One-on-One withAward-Winning Writers
Online Courses
Learn from Home
3 Writing Residencies
3 Entry Points to Start in the Program
Beautiful Rural Campus Nestled in the Etowah Valley (550+ acres)
Nestled in the shadow of Pine Log Mountain for the perfect writing experience, the Etowah Valley is a bridge betweenAtlanta and theAppalachian South, where nature meets culture. At Reinhardt University’s Etowah Valley Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Low-Residency Program writers create a literature that is story-driven and grounded in the places where we live, whether rural or urban.
Each summer, students visit our beautiful campus in North Georgia for a 10-day intensive residency to be immersed in writing daily writing workshops, craft classes, experiential excursions into natural and urban environments, and nightly readings on campus from our visiting writers. Our students travel from all over the United States to attend the summer residency to learn from some of the finest writers. In doing so, they embody a unique mixture of cultural traditions and lifestyles.Amid the thrivingAtlanta film scene and Southern environmentalism, we believe in the art of storytelling that develops voice and meaning to the individual artist.
For more information, visit the MFA website or contact the MFA director, William Walsh, at bjw@reinhardt.edu
Core Faculty:
Anjali Enjeti (creative non-fiction/fiction)
Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change The Parted Earth
Jessica Handler (creative non-fiction/fiction) The Magnetic Girl Invisible Sisters
Soniah Kamal (fiction)
An Isolated Incident Unmarriageable
Donna Coffey Little (poetry/fiction) Fire Street
Wofford’s Blood
Michael Lucker (screenwriting)
Crash! Boom! Bang! How to Write Action Movies Rule One
Past Visiting Writers:
Laura Newbern (poetry)
Love and the Eye A Night in the Country
Gray Stewart (fiction) Haylow
Megan Volpert (poetry/creative non-fiction)
Why Alanis Morissette Matters Boss Broad
William Walsh (poetry/fiction)
Haircuts for the Dead Fly Fishing in Times Square
John Williams (fiction/creative non-fiction) End Times
Monroeville and the Stage Production of To Kill a Mockingbird
Adrian Blevins, Daniel Black, David Bottoms, Richard Blanco, Earl Braggs, Jericho Brown, Annemarie Ni Churreáin, Denise Duhamel, Stephen Dunn, Pam Durban, Alice Friman, Anthony Grooms, Beth Gylys, Ann Hite, Kristie Robin Johnson, Andrea Jurjević, John Lane, Ellen Malphrus, Reginald McKnight, Christopher Noel, Robert Olmstead, Janisse Ray, Megan Sexton, George Singleton, Sharon Strange, Chika Unigwe, Monica Lee Weatherly
I’m an indie author of two short story collections – Walking the Wrong Way Home and Sharp as a Serpent’s Tooth – Eva and Other Stories, and a novella, Oliver. I’m the editor and designer of WELL READ Magazine’s Best of 2023, and Best of 2024 anthologies, the Encounters With Nature anthology, and coeditor of The Best of the Shortest: A Southern Writers Reading Reunion. I’m also a freelance writer for Amelia Islander Magazine, and the Editor in Chief and Publisher of WELL READ MAGAZINE.
I’ve learned so much about formatting, interior design, cover design, and self-publishing since my first short story collection came out and oddly enough, I’ve had fun doing it! But it can be frustrating and overwhelming trying to figure it all out on your own. I’d like to use what I’ve learned to help you.
Whether you’re thinking of self-publishing, querying agents or small presses, I can get your manuscript ready to send out without costing a fortune or waiting for months for a finished product.
Cover Design Pricing starts at $250 - Price includes unlimited tweaks until it’s perfect. See the next page for a few examples of covers I’ve created.
Interior formatting - $2 per page, $3 per page if photos and/or images are included in your manuscript. For more information, click here, or contact me at mandy@mandyhaynes. com for a free consultation.
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A monthly column that takes us off the page and into the
Presidential Journal 8-14-2025
I’m thinking about running for President. I don’t really want to do it, but for the good of the country I may have to. We are in a pretty big mess right now; things are getting messier by the hour, and the reason we are where we are is because for 250 years a succession of guys have put party, money, and power over people, and that is a tendency that seems to be growing exponentially under the Trump regime. I am referring to our past and current Presidents, of course, and especially our current one.And yes, they were all guys, but that is not my fault; I have voted for women for this office every chance I got and will continue to do so. Men just seem too emotional for this type of work. Plus there isThe Johnson Problem, which is responsible for many more problems than solutions, and I will not go into it here. No, I’m not talking about LBJ.
Anyway, we have had a few good Presidents in the mix over the years, but even the good ones were not that good when it came to protecting the interests of just regular folks like you and me, and even when they did good things, they did them for the wrong reasons, which is almost as bad as not doing them at all. Take Abraham Lincoln as an example. He was arguably the best of the bunch—even though he was a Republican—and he believed in his heart of hearts that slavery was wrong. As we all know, he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a very good thing, but
there was a catch. He only freed the slaves in the Confederate States, and he freed them by confiscating them as war contraband and not as people, and if that is not an instance of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, I will eat my hat. So even though I am retired and have grown really fond of not doing much, I guess I’m going to have to take a run at it.
There are some things I must do prior to my run so I will be perceived as being “Presidential” and thus a viable candidate. The first and apparently most important of these is playing golf. Every modern President since Jimmy Carter has been a golfer, so if I want to be taken seriously, I’m going to have to start playing. Actually, when I was a young man I used to play golf, in a manner of speaking. At that time, I was a mill hand at Riegel Textile Corporation, and on payday mornings after a long night and longer week of cotton-milling, several of us lintheads would gather at the local golf course—which was originally built by the company for the exclusive use of its executives because, you know, it is really hard having the best jobs in the mill, and sometimes those poor boys just needed to relax.Anyway, we would ride around in rented carts, drinking beer and whacking at balls polo-style, before retiring to the clubhouse for a spirited game of Tonk. So, I do have some prior experience with the game, and it shouldn’t be that hard to pick it back up. I wonder if Secret Service agents know how to play Tonk?
Once I get the golfing thing sorted out, my next step will be to get a better phone. Don’t get me wrong; I love my old flip-phone.
It is just one generation removed from having a curly cord coming out of the receiver.We have been together now for many years, and it has a level of technology I am comfortable with, which is to say, not much technology at all. It still works fine, and I can’t bear to just throw it away, so I might pass it on to some deserving member of my Cabinet. Perhaps my Secretary of Defense could find a use for it.Anyway, modern Presidents like to spend their days on their phones, “texting” and “posting” and “twittering” and all manner of other activities that have now taken the place of actually running the country, and if I wish to move in those circles, I must get on board. The first thing I will do with my new phone is post something egregious to get everyone stirred up. Perhaps my post will “trend”—which is something I am told is desirable—on its way to becoming “viral”—which is apparently the ultimate outcome for these things, even though it sounds like something that might put you into your bed for a few days.
Before I get too carried away with my plans, I suppose I’m going to need some money. Current fund-raising trends seem to center around pardoning rich criminals in exchange for big campaign contributions, but I have to tell you that this method just does not feel right to me. So, I am going to have a banquet. It will be $100 a plate and will feature Kentucky Fried Chicken plus two sides. Even people who say they don’t like KFC actually do, and provided my potential supporters don’t go crazy on the white meat, this plan should raise enough money for a new phone, some golf clubs, and maybe a necktie on top of that. And if not that many
people show up, I can take the excess chicken home. That stuff lasts forever.
One last thing I will need is a catchy slogan. I never much cared for Make America Great Again because I always thought America was pretty great to start with and did not need to be changed into something less. Tippecanoe and Tyler Too has been used, and it never made much sense anyway. A Car in Every Garage and Two Chickens in Every Pot locks me into buying a whole lot of chickens, not to mention cars. How about Fix What’s Broken and Leave the Rest the HellAlone. I like it. Perhaps it will trend.
Presidential Journal 8-20-2025
As many of you know, I recently announced my candidacy for President of the United States in 2028. Things have been going dazzlingly—which is a word—and the dollars have been rolling in: nine so far. On a side note, my Campaign Manager has asked that all spare change be rolled before donating. We appreciate the help, but pennies keep getting stuck in the Roomba. My Campaign Manager—the Mrs.—hates it when that happens.
With regards to the fundraiser I previously scheduled, it will go on as planned, but there will be a menu change. As it turns out,
chicken is the new steak, and it has grown expensive. I guess it got tariffed. Plus, and I still can’t believe this, many of you have said that you don’t particularly like KFC, which is kind of un-American if you ask me, but I’m going to let it slide. Instead we are going to have a potato bar. Also, if you want to eat before you come, that would be great. And if you have a favorite casserole, bring it. And the nice Chinet Dinner Plates with theAmerican flags on them are out, but we will double-up on the cheap ones so as to avoid any sour cream-related mishaps. Oh, and don’t forget your $100, and maybe bring a potato.
Some of you have asked why I declared my intentions so early, and I guess I ought to address that. I am running what is called a grass roots campaign, which means that I must rely heavily upon word of mouth, so the longer my campaign, the better. I am keeping this journal of my campaign as a record for posterity, and also to score some free advertising, but don’t tell Mandy that. She thinks this is just my column.Also, long campaigns seem to be the thing these days. Even our current President ran one, beginning on the very day he lost to his opponent in 2020.Yes, he really did. No, saying he didn’t does not change that fact. He did, however, take a day away from the campaign trail on January 6, 2021, stating that he had something else to do that day.
Many of my supporters want to know about my platform. A platform is political-speak for what I intend to do. This is a bit tricky, because my Presidency is going to be more about un-doing than doing, and by the time I get rid of four years’ worth of the
crazy stuff done by my predecessor, my own four-year term will be completed. Then I will be through being President. This is a key plank in my platform. I am only planning on being a one-term President, because as I see it, much of the wrong in our country today happened because first-term Presidents made too many deals while trying to gain enough support to become second-term Presidents. As a matter of fact, once I become President, a oneterm-limit for President will become the law. I realize I can’t legally do this, but I’m going to do it anyway via the Executive Order. It works like this: 1. I decide on a course of action that I don’t have the Constitutional power to legally perform. 2. I say, “Hell with that,” sign an Executive Order, and do it anyway. 3.
Once all the smoke clears and it turns out I couldn’t do it after all, it is already done.
Stay tuned for my next update from Campaign Central.
Mandy Haynes is the author of two short story collections, Walking the Wrong Way Home, Sharp as a Serpent's Tooth Eva and Other Stories, and a novella, Oliver. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies and literary journals. She is the editor and designer of Encounters with Nature, a collaboration ofAmelia Island Writers and Artists, The WELL READ's Best of 2023 anthologies, and also the co-editor of The Best of the Shortest: A Southern Writers Reading Reunion.
Raymond L.Atkins, Contributing Editor for OFF THE PAGE
Raymond L. Atkins resides in Rome, Georgia, on the banks of the Etowah River in an old house with a patient wife and a lazy cat. His hobbies include people-watching, reading, and watching movies that have no hope of ever achieving credibility. His first novel, The Front Porch Prophet, was published in 2008 and was awarded the Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel. Camp Redemption, was awarded the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction and the 2014 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Fiction. Sweetwater Blues was a Townsend Prize nominee, the 2015 GeorgiaAuthor of the Year runner-up for fiction, and the 2016 selection for One Book, Many Voices. South of the Etowah, his first creative non-fiction book, was released in 2016. It was nominated for a Push-cart Prize and was the 2016 GeorgiaAuthor of theYearAward runner-up for essay. In 2017, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Writers Association.
Robert Gwaltney, Contributing Editor for INSIDE VOICES
Robert Gwaltney, award winning author of southern fiction, is a graduate of Florida State University. He resides in Atlanta Georgia with his partner, where he is an active member of the Atlanta literary community. Robert’s work has appeared in such publications as The Signal Mountain Review and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. His debut novel, The Cicada Tree, won the Somerset Award for literary fiction. In 2023, Gwaltney was named Georgia Author of the Year for first novel.
Meet the staff
Ann Hite, Contributing Editor for MOUNTAIN MAGIC
In September of 2011 Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, published Ann Hite’s first novel, Ghost on Black Mountain. In 2012 this novel was shortlisted for the Townsend Prize, Georgia’s oldest literary award. In the same year, Ghost on Black Mountain won Hite Georgia Author of the Year. She went on to publish four more novels, a novella, memoir, and most recently Haints On Black Mountain: A Haunted Short Story Collection from Mercer University Press. In December 2022, Haints On Black Mountain was one of ten finalist for the Townsend Prize. The collection was a Bronze Winner in Foreword IndieAward 2023 and GeorgiaAuthor of the Year Second Place Winner for Short Stories 2023. Ann received a scholarship to the Appalachian Witers Workshop Hindman Settlement in the summer of 2020 and was invited back in 2021. Her passion for history influences all her work.
Jeffrey Dale Lofton, Contributing Editor for INSIDE VOICES
Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia. His years telling the stories of playwrights and scriptwriters as a stage and screen actor taught him the pull of a powerful story arc. Today, he is Senior Advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love them. Red Clay Suzie is his debut novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his lens—gay and living with a disability—in a conservative family in the Deep South. It was longlisted for the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and awarded the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction, among other distinctions.
Dawn Major, Contributing Editor for TRIPLIT with D Major
Dawn Major’s debut novel, The Bystanders, was named finalist for 2024 GeorgiaAuthor of the Year for Best First Novel. Major is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and advocates for southern authors via her blog, Southernread. Her literary awards include the following: the Dr. Robert Driscoll Award, Reinhardt University’s Faculty ChoiceAward, and the James Dickey Review Literary Fellowship. Major is a member of the William Gay Archive and has edited and helped publish the works of the late author. She serves on the board for Broadleaf Writers Association and is also a member of M’ville, anAtlanta-based artist salon. Major lives in the Old Fourth Ward inAtlanta, GA and is working on her next novel, The Dandy Chronicles.
Claire Hamner Matturro , Contributing Editor for CLAIRE CONSIDERS
Claire Hamner Matturro is a former attorney, former university writing instructor, avid reader, and the author of seven novels, including four published by HarperCollins. Her poetry appears in various journals including Slant and Lascaux Review. She is an associate editor ofThe Southern LiteraryReview and lives happily in Florida with her cross-eyed rescued black cat and her husband.
Annie McDonnell, Contributing Editor forANNIEASKS
Founder of The Write Review Literary Community, Podcaster, Book Reviewer, Author Consultant and Matchmaker. She also teaches workshops on top of all of this!Annie has been introducing us to books and authors since 2006, when she began reviewing books for Elle Magazine. Proud Stiff Person Syndrome Warrior, and several other illnesses.
Susan
Beckham Zurenda, Contributing Editor for THE WRITER’S
EYE
Susan Beckham Zurenda taught English for 33 years on the college level and at the high school level toAP students. She is author of the award-winning Southern literary novel, Bells for Eli, and the recipient of numerous awards for her short fiction, including the South Carolina Fiction Awards, twice. Her second novel, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel (Mercer University Press, September 2023), was the recipient of the 2024 Patricia Winn Award in Southern Fiction, Gold Medal winner in the 2024 IPPY Awards for Southeast Fiction, a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, a Shelf Unbound 2023 Notable 100 books, and a finalist in theAmerican Book FestAwards. Susan lives in Spartanburg, SC.
Junebug Fischer by
Mandy Haynes
Junebug Fischer will be ninety-six come June. She's ready to set the record straight and let you know what really happened the summer she turned fifteen. It’s true, she killed someone, but she never killed nobody on purpose. That was purely accidental.
“I don’t know what caused me to shoot the arrow. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. Was it fear or was it pride?”
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most compelling story/book writers in America.
“Outstanding book. Intelligent, and yet creative, in the best sense of the word. The story/book keeps you engaged right up until the final page. Great, great book!!!”
5.0 out of 5 stars Will leave you wanting more!
“Junebug Fischer is the kind of strong, feisty young lady hero we love, and Mandy's writing of her story draws you in from the start. You'll feel like you're sitting on that porch with her, and I guarantee you'll want more. Her characters come to life in all of her stories, and I recommend you read everything Mandy has written, and will write! You won't be disappointed.”
5.0 out of 5 stars A Southern Voice to Remember
“There's an echo of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in the voice of the central character here, and I mean that as a high compliment. You'll like her after the first two sentences and root for her the rest of this short but powerful book. I don't want to give anything away. Buy it and read for yourself. 5 stars.”
