Alice has always been the odd one in her small Appalachian community. She loves water, her hair grows incredibly fast, her feet are slightly webbed, and somehow her personality has just never “fit in.” She’s done her best all her life to blend into the background, but she gets quite a bit of publicity when Continue Reading…
Abby Sinclair is the neglected daughter of a plantation owner. Three years after the end of the Civil War, she is still mourning the loss of her uncle and her family is still adjusting to the loss of their slaves. When her father decides to move the whole family out to the Outer Banks of Continue Reading…
I would say that Bound South is a group of connected short stories. There’s not really one plot that connects the chapters. Instead, I would say that the author uses these stories, told from the points of view of three different Southern ladies, to explore issues they each face and how hard it can be Continue Reading…
Lily Davis was only 17 when she married a boy she had known for a short time. He was shipping out to WWII soon as a supply man for Coca-Cola and it seemed like the thing to do before he went away. Three years later, her hometown of Toccoa, Georgia has scheduled a big homecoming Continue Reading…
Hart Bonner is the son of a formerly prosperous plantation owner. Jennie Grant is his cousin’s biracial cook. In South Carolina in the early 1900s, she is considered a “Negro” and it is a felony for a white man to have “relations” with her. She and Hart carry on a secret affair for years though. Continue Reading…
I decided to read this because Thomas Wolfe was from my area and I only had to read one short story of his for an English class. I wanted to see what he was all about. This is basically the slightly fictionalized story of his childhood and young adult years growing up in the mountains Continue Reading…
In Depression-era North Carolina, a timber baron marries Serena and brings her to the lumber camps to live. Her ambition outmatches his and she drives him to succeed, prosper, and expand at any cost. Wow. What a character Ron Rash has created in Serena. I detested her, but she is going to stick with me Continue Reading…
In Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights era, a white woman stumbles on the idea of writing a book about the black maids of the area and the white families they work for. There have been so many great reviews written for this book, that I don’t know if I have a whole lot more Continue Reading…
Frank Locke is the son of an opium addict in the 1920s in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He’s quit school to work in a cotton mill and take care of his parents’ and grandparents’ farms. He’s bitter about his father, but he’s found a good woman to love. Then some big family Continue Reading…
Nonny Frett is caught between. She was born into the Crabtree family and secretly adopted into the Frett family, two groups that have been fighting since time immemorial. She wants to divorce her husband but she’s caught between lust and lassitude. She’s frequently caught between what she wants to do and what she feels like Continue Reading…
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate has been having nightmares for months. In his dreams, he’s unsuccessfully trying to save a girl. Then Lena Duchannes, the first new girl to move into his small South Carolina town in years, shows up. He recognizes her as the girl from his dreams, and things only get more complicated from there. Continue Reading…