Book will leave you waiting in anticipation for the next one

Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, an award founded by Barbara Kingsolver to an unpublished author, Dallas-born Hillary Jordan’s “Mudbound” is set in the Delta country of rural Mississippi. Told in the vernacular of the six main characters, all of who become unwitting players in the tragedy that unfolds piece by piece in the year just after the end of World War II.Due to the unforeseen death of a family member, Laura McAllan is wrenched from her beloved Memphis and relocated to the Delta farm her husband Henry sees as his destiny. It is not a beautiful place. Flat and wet, Laura quickly christens the farm Mudbound. When her two young daughters come down with whooping cough, she makes the acquaintance of Florence Jackson, wife of their black tenant farmer. Florence is a midwife, and sometimes hired maid, and mother to returning war hero Ronsel, a decorated tank gunner from an all-black artillery unit that fought in the Battle of the Bulge. But this is the Jim Crow South, and no black man is allowed to carry the hero mantle for long. more >>

advertising

April 15, 2008

Words leap out of journal with raw, exposed emotion

Every so often, a book comes along that is so rich and complex, that so vividly captures the essence of place, that seamlessly blends the cerebral with the actual, even a jaded reader like me can’t put it down. “Spring’s Edge: A Ranch Wife’s Chronicle” is just such a book. more >>