Review of "Sing Me Back Home" by David Boone

David Boone, Western North Carolina wood carver of nationally renowned fame and accomplished painter and musician, has pulled a new trick out of his hat of artistic talents: that of master story teller. With his newly published book, Sing Me Back Home, Boone at long last brings to the public his Vietnam War stories that give credit to veterans as few books from that time have done.

Told in a voice that is rich with the heritage of the Black Mountains in whose shadows he grew up, Sing Me Back Home is a collection of tales and photographs that bring to life in an often humorous fashion some otherwise very dark moments. “I wanted to tell about the Vietnam War the way I saw it, not how Hollywood tells it,” Boone reports. “So many negative things have been said about this war. All the movies dwell on the gory aspects, on bombing villages, whatever. But that’s not what I saw.”

Boone was drafted into the Army in December of 1966, barely a year after he married Elaine Hensley, also a Yancey County native. Less than a year and many funny tales later, he landed in Cam Ranh Bay to join the 1097 Medium Boat Company, only to discover on his first night there that his arrival would mark the very first time the giant, sprawling base was to come under enemy attack. “I could hear machine gun fire, small arms fire, and mortar rounds coming from everywhere. It did not sound very good,” he dryly recounts. From that point things went down hill fast for the next 12 months, as he so clearly relates in his humorous story teller’s voice honed as a youngster sitting at the feet of his grandfather Ewart Wilson, long regarded as a master story teller of Western North Carolina mountain lore.

Why the humor about such a grizzly experience, one might ask.

“Well, it wasn’t really a lot of fun in Vietnam, but I didn’t want to be a whiner. If you sort of didn’t put a bit of a twist on things, it could get under your skin pretty bad,” Boone explains. “It could get you a bit crazy, and I didn’t want to be that way, so you sort of put a wall up. You needed that wall so that you weren’t upset and nervous all the time.” Humor was that wall.

Boone’s Vietnam book is actually a memoir, recounting how he tried to get into the Nashville music scene, then met his wife Elaine and settled down a bit, and then got his unexpected draft notice at age 27. He recounts in great detail his training experiences and his surprise posting to of all things an Army boat company. His stories unfold through some of the worst fighting in the Mekong Delta, all the way through the infamous Tet Offensive. He does not gloss over the fighting and bloodshed, but he does not dwell on it either. “Everybody knows it was a war,” he notes. Instead, he goes to great pains to humanize his fellow soldiers. “I wanted to tell about what went on between the battles, what we were really like.”

Boone also wanted to leave a legacy to his children and grandchildren, and his next project will continue that effort. Called “Papa’s Bear Stories,” his second book will be a collection of tales as told by his grandfather Ewart Wilson, grandson of Big Tom Wilson, a famous bear hunter and guide from Yancey County.  “My granddaddy, whom we all called ‘Papa’, and his granddaddy did a lot of bear hunting together, and my brother and I heard his wonderful stories over and over again sitting at Papa’s knees. These tales are really worth preserving.”

Review written by Worth Weller.

Writers from the Past: A Call to Writers & Families from the Toe River Anthology 1979

               

Thirty-five years ago a group of novice writers began meeting in the mezzanine of the Burnsville Library.  Mayland Technical Institute (now Mayland Community College) cosponsored the class with the newly-established Toe River Arts Council. The teacher was a retired English professor from Asheville, Dr. Francis Pledger Hulme, who cajoled, encouraged and teased the 24 members, ages 18 to 80, into producing poetry, fiction and memoirs.  He was so impressed by the writing he was seeing that he suggested publishing an anthology.  Dr. Hulme selected the contents of the Toe River Anthology 1979.  Marilyn Cade illustrated the book, Yancey Graphics produced it, and the Toe River Arts Council sold it until there were no more.

            Some of the original writers continued to write and to meet in a group that adopted the name of The Scribblers and continues to this day.  Others wrote on their own or moved on to other activities or away from the area. Now with an invitation from the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, a few of the original group plus two from The Scribblers will be on stage in the Burnsville Town Center on Saturday, September 14, at 11:00 a.m. to read from the anthology and from their more recent writing as well. 

The theme of this year’s festival of “Take Me There” befits this reading, which will be given by Donna Jean Dreyer, Susan Larson, Pat Riviere-Seel, and Ruth Pope, and will honor all the writers in the anthology as well as the Scribblers.  Those writers were Sally Burrowes, Gladys Coletta, Mabel Cox, Phyllis Downing, Jewell Hall, Mary and Robert Helmle, Frances Higgins, Dessie Honeycutt, Stormy Honeycutt, Mary Kay Klein, Susan Larson, Carmela Mandala, Dorothy Morgan, Hilda Nocks, Della Ogilvie, Beverly Plummer, Ruth Pope, Barbara Talley, Fred Topping, Leonard Widawski, Carmela and Maurice Woodruff, and Jo Woody.  Family and friends of these writers are especially encouraged to attend the free event.

            Toe River Anthology 1979 is being reprinted and will be available to purchase at the literary festival.  Within the anthology readers will find a broad cross-section of writing, from heartfelt poems to keen observations of nature to deft vignettes about mostly older citizens, some of them written in local dialect.  Mystery, romance, comedy – all forms are in the anthology.  The mountains in Yancey County and up to Tennessee and down to Georgia and west to Cherokee and east to Grandfather Mountain provide the setting for much of the writing.  However, as some of the authors were from “off,” the writing also transports the reader from Paris (Ruth Pope) to New York (Maurice Woodruff) to Oak Park, Illinois (Robert Helmle).  A former mayor of Burnsville, Robert Helmle was a childhood friend of Ernest Hemingway and his memoir “Boyhood Recollections of Ernest Hemingway and His Father,” concludes the anthology. 

            The audience will also learn first-hand what being in the writing group has meant to the four readers.  Poet Pat Riviere-Seel and memoirist Donna Jean Dreyer are both published authors, and Ruth Pope is working on a memoir. 

            Writers or relatives of writers from the anthology are encouraged to contact Susan Larson at 828-765-2652 if they have questions about the event or the book.

 

written by Susan Larson

Review of "Season of Terror: The Espinosas in Central Colorado, March-October 1863" by Charles Price

What Wallace Stegner does for Utah’s legendary outlaws such as Robert LeRoy Parker (a.k.a. Butch Cassidy) in his 1942 book Mormon Country, Charles F. Price has done for neighboring Colorado in his first book-length foray into non-fiction, Season of Terror: The Espinosas in Central Colorado, March-October, 1863. He has humanized some of the American West’s most ruthless killers.

Written in the lyrical prose that is the hallmark of his highly regarded Civil War novels about Western North Carolina (Hiwassee, 1996, Freedom’s Altar, 1999, The Cock’s Spur, 2002 and Where the Water-Dogs Laughed, 2005), Season of Terror takes Price’s literary talents on a long chase through the rugged mountains of Colorado that overlook the dusty plains of New Mexico. The wild but true story follows the exploits and ultimate ambush and killings of two brothers bent on a revenge fueled murder and mutilation spree that claimed the lives of as many as 32 men, women and children.

Price, who is the winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction along with such other notable North Carolina writers as Reynolds Price (no relation) and Charles Frazier, has deep roots in Colorado too, as his wife Ruth Perschbacher Price is from Salida and has extensive family there. The couple actually tracked down on foot many of the details and locations of the shootings and final killings of the outlaws. The book contains many of his own photos and personally sketched maps, breathing life and a sense of place into a tale that in other writers’ hands might have only been dusty pages of long-forgotten and little-explored history.

What normally might be little more than a footnote in a textbook about 19^th century American history, Price turns into a gripping Wild West adventure as he tracks brothers Felipe Nerio and José Vivian Espinosa, who along with their young nephew José Vincente began a reign of terror in the spring of 1863 across the San Luis Valley west of Trinidad. Six months later, as Price documents, they were hunted down and gruesomely beheaded by US Army Scout Thomas Tate Tobin in the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Walsenburg.

Price’s meticulous research vividly tells their story with the help of newspaper accounts from the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Republican, which followed the exploits of the killers on almost a daily basis. His scholarly efforts are praised by historian Stephen J. Leonard, Professor of History and Chairperson of the History Department at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, as being “more than a detailed and gripping account of a raft of killings.” He explains that Price’s work reveals a much larger picture, spanning centuries of conflict between Anglos and Hispanics and painting such a complex tale of Colorado’s early history so different from today’s modern West “that we can imagine it only with the help of an insightful guide.”

Despite his own trekking across the terrain of the Espinosas’ brutal rampage, and despite countless hours poring over newspaper archives and other early accounts of the US Army’s efforts to bring the murderers to ruthless justice, a mystery still remains at the core of Price’s tale. Were the murderers really “desperate and lawless bravos,” as the Denver press described them at the time? Were they the persecuted members of a secretive Catholic sect known as the Penitentes? Were they possibly seeking revenge of the loss of their own small property at that hand of Colorado’s large ranchers? Or, on a more sinister note, were they victims of the broader and more racist effort by Colorado authorities to rid the new U.S. Territory of all vestiges of Hispanic influence following the conclusion just 15 years earlier of the Mexican-American War in which the United States seized more than half a million square miles of Mexican territory, much of which makes up today’s modern southern and western Colorado? Price skillfully addresses these questions but wisely leaves the reader to decide the answers.

Published by the University Press of Colorado, Season of Terror can be ordered from their website at http://www.upcolorado.com/ or from Amazon.com both as a hard cover and as a Kindle edition.

review written by Worth Weller

 

 

Carolina Mountains Literary Festival "Take Me There" 2013

Review of "The Farmer's Wake" by Anne Maren-Hogan

Review written by local poet Kathy Weisfeld

 

 

Anne Maren-Hogan in

The Farmer's Wake, gives us poems as rich in language as the Iowa soil she describes so vividly. Telling stories of generations of women,

we learn about more than farm life and the people who raised her. Her landscapes and portraits are of the emotions and connections felt as she writes of farm seasons and life seasons

stitching it all together with this certainty/of leaving and returning.

Review of "Terroir" by Robert Morgan

Review written by Anne Maren-Hogan




Robert Morgan's newest book of poems "Terroir" lives up to it's name, loosely translated as "a sense of place," which is embodied in certain characteristic qualities, the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the production of the product. He takes us on a long hike in these southern Appalachians in his poems drawing on science and folklore, Native American history and music. Walking with him through this book leaves one only wanting to go out again to find a path from your place and now with eyes open walk with wonder in the local and familiar, the sacred in the everyday. 

Review of "Breaking the Sound Barrier" by Amy Goodman

Review written by Joy Boothe

 “Each person is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

- Amy Goodman

In Goodman’s latest book, an anthology of reports from “Democracy Now!” she sticks to the facts whether reporting on climate change, Wall Street bailouts, public healthcare vs private insurance companies or anything else in between.  Goodman gives us information that at times we may wish we didn’t know, but need to know if we are to make informed decisions about the issues of our day. Goodman’s reporting does not rely on propaganda, ties to special interest groups or rhetoric. She is a truth teller. “It is,” she has said, “the responsibility of journalists to go where the silence is, to seek out news and people who are ignored, to accurately and clearly report on the issues…issues that the corporate, for profit media often distort, if they cover them at all. 

 A New York Times bestselling author, journalist and reporter, Goodman has won dozens of awards including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.

I double dog dare you to read this book.  Investigative journalism at its best…hard hitting with no holds barred.

 

 

A Double Review of "Across the Universe" & "A Million Suns" by Beth Revis
Review written by M. Shelly

What will the future look like when we are capable of space-travel?  For one Earth-born teenager Amy, it means being held in a cryogenic sleep for 300 years while traveling across the universe to a new and habitable planet.

Ever wonder who is running the ship during all those long years? The adventure begins as Amy wakes up and finds herself nowhere near the destination. The only other teenager on board the spaceship is Elder, captain in training.

This teenage-duo soon become detectives in solving mysteries of murder, mayhem, engine problems, and hidden stairways. As they dig deeper into the secrets of the spaceship, they also discover a loving friendship.  It is a very fast paced book; adults and children will both enjoy it.

Each chapter is written from either Amy’s or Elder’s perspective. Their voices are distinct and easily identified.  My only grievance was when I got to the end of the second book and realized that the third book, Shades of Earth, was not going to be released until January of 2013!                                                  

Review of "Jesse" by Joy Boothe

Review written by Kathleen Turczyn


Jesse

A short story by Joy Boothe

Published in The Great Smokies Review, Issue 6, Spring 2012

Jesse tells the story of how Joy Boothe came to name her first son.  It takes place over the course of 22 years, the narration moving seamlessly from a 5-year-old’s simple approach to the world to the frame of reference of a complex, intelligent 27-year-old.  The story begins with her enmity towards the name Jesse, because it belongs to Boothe’s angry, emotionally damaged great uncle; it ends with a wild love of it, because of her father’s friend Jesse, an epitome of humanity.  In between the two is an intense account that includes alcoholism, suicide, racism and hate, kindness, passion, murder, acceptance, friendship and love.

As with all of Boothe’s stories, Jesse grabs you by the neck and doesn’t let go. The approach is direct, without artifice. The story is told with a lack of sentiment that gives it a surprisingly hard punch.  Joy doesn’t waste one word; each propels the story forward with vivid imagery.  Instead of saying “It’s hot,” Joy writes, “The road is buckling in the sun, and tar is sticking to the bottoms of my feet.” You’re there with her.

Jesse is packed tightly into a perfect box, yanking you through Boothe’s world breathless, shocked, grateful, released at the end.

Review of "The Color of Love: A Mother's Choice in the Jim Crow South" by Gene Cheek

Review written by Ruth Ellen Price

Gene Cheek taps into the world of a young boy with straightforward storytelling, allowing the reader to become a part of Gene’s childhood experiences with a wise grandmother, an abusive alcoholic father, a gentle mother and a legal system that forces a mother to choose between two of her children.  After years of abuse Gene’s mother Sallie Anderson finds the strength to divorce her husband, but when she falls in love with the wrong man (according to his skin color) she loses her job and begins dropping further into poverty.  Under the laws of North Carolina in 1963 Sallie and Cornelius Tucker are not allowed to marry.  When Sallie gives birth to their child, the entire family becomes besieged by hatred.  

Gene’s father Jesse Cheek was taught to hate “coloreds” from birth and could not abide his wife with another man, particularly a man who was not only the wrong race, but who was everything he was not – a good father.  Supported by his mother, Mr. Cheek took Sallie to court and with the assistance of the legal system, Sallie was given a choice no mother should ever have to make.

While this tragedy took place over fifty years ago, it provides a cautionary tale about how hate can become institutionalized in our legal system and prejudice can defy what is most important in family matters, abiding love.

Gene Cheek will be reading from his memoir at the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival on September 7 and 8 in Burnsville.


 

Review of "Anna and the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins

Review written by Caroline Hughes, recent high school graduate

Ah, Paris.  City of Light, City of Love, City of...SOAP?  School of America in Paris; yes, that is where Anna Oliphant will be spending her senior year of high school.  Away from her normal life in Atlanta, Georgia, her best friend Bridgette, and her could-be-new-boyfriend, Toph.  Anna hates that she'll be missing out on her old life, and hates her rich, sappy-romance-novel-writing father for sending her away to some boarding school practically on the other side of the world. And, maybe, she's just a little bit scared of being a clueless American in Paris.

Anna soon feels a little less homesick once she befriends an artsy group of fellow SOAP students, which includes a charming English boy named Etienne St. Clair.  Unfortunately, the highly attractive Brit is in a long-term relationship with a former SOAP student, but that shouldn't bother Anna anyway.  She sort of has Toph, so no problem.  Yet as St. Clair shows Anna around Paris, helping her gain confidence and develop a new curiosity for the exciting city around her, she can't help but notice that he has the most gorgeous brown eyes and purposely messy brown hair.  And on top of that, what girl can resist an English accent?  Try as she might to fight it, Anna finds herself falling for the already taken St. Clair.  However, some tragic news and a hectic Christmas break shake things up so much that Anna is not much certain of anything...except that she is absolutely in love with Etienne.

Anna and the French Kiss is a pleasant teen romance as well as a story of embracing life changes.  The progression of Anna and St. Clair's friendship is very sweet and enticing, like a French pastry, and there is a refreshing sense of quest as Anna navigates the streets of Paris and the pressures of boarding school life.  With all the fun a slightly predictable story offers, Anna and the French Kiss will likely satisfy the cravings of those with a taste for light romance. 

Review of "Naked Came the Leaf Peeper" featuring Brian Lee Knopp, John P. McAfee, Susan Reinhardt, Vicki Lane, Tommy Hays, Wayne Caldwell, Fred Chappell, Alan Gratz, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Gene Cheek, Linda Marie Barrett, Charles F. Price, and Tony Earley

Review written by David Speed

Many authors would run screaming the other way if given a chance to collaborate on a literary project.  They’d rather sink or swim by their own hand.  The writers of this local treasure created  ‘Naked Came the Leaf Peeper’ with the attitude that there are others to share the blame, so let it rip!  What ensues is worthy of their unleashed twisted talents.

Mix a sprinkle of Lisbeth Salander with a dash of Hannibal Lecter, a southern drawl, flaming red hair and freckles.  Call the result Garnell Lee Ray.  Place her hidden amongst the rhododendron alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway with a loaded tater gun and then hold on!

Garnell’s path crosses the likes of J. D. Klontz, a relocated Yankee detective, Rowena, the incredibly sexy High Priestess and Mr. Michaux, a local big wig developer to name just a few.  Greed, lust, incest and revenge take this tale into dark hollers, over steep mountain footpaths and lead the reader up the river without a paddle.

Don’t even think about foreshadowing being used here.  Each author takes the baton, makes a left turn, drops it in a mysterious cove filled with fog or pitches it in the French Broad River before letting go.  Hilarity rules while everyone reading is left wondering what the hell is going to happen next? 

Local scenery, legend, lies and characters abound.  Western North Carolina never looked so good or bad for that matter.  These pages are equal opportunity offenders taking careful aim and finding their marks.  If you don’t identify with anyone in this book, you don’t live around here, do ya?

Do yourself a favor.  Put down this review and run to the bookstore, library or the Internet, and order up a heaping helping of genius run amok that is ‘Naked Came the Leaf Peeper.’

Carolina Mountains Literary Festival 2012

We gladly announce that registration for Carolina Mountains Literary Festival 2012

Landscapes of Imagination

is now open, and e-registration is easier than ever! 

http://www.cmlitfest.org/register

Please keep in mind that pre-registration is required ONLY for those events with a fee and/or limited attendance: the writing workshops and the Saturday Dinner Banquet.

The "Naked Came the Leaf Peeper" authors' panel on Friday evening is free as are all other sessions.



Schedule Schedule Schedule

There is a printable schedule now available on the website ww.cmlitfest.org (both on the home page and the schedule page.)

Also, your eyes do not deceive you. Bob Plott had been on Friday morning's schedule, but he is unable to attend because he's feeling under the weather. You can send him happy thoughts.

There are many other fine authors to hear Friday morning including young-adult author Monika Schroder, op-ed writer Zack Allen, poets Joseph Bathanti & Britt Kaufmann, novelists (and cousins somehow) Pamela Duncan and Charles F. Price, storyteller Sherry Lovett and Brenda Lunsford Lilly (who writes for both screen and stage). Yes, she's the one who wrote The Ballad of Tom Dooley and Along About Sundown which you may have seen at the Parkway Playhouse.

photo used with permission from MaryLee Yearick Photography

To read a recent review of Along About Sundown, click here.

Review of "Belonging" by Britt Kaufmann

Review written by Janice Willis Barnett, author of Unicoi and Limestone Cove.

I pick up Belonging by Britt Kaufmann and the book opens to “Hand-Me-Down Gift,” the poem on its center page. “Ahhh yes…,” I say to myself and re-relish reading this poem the narrator offers to her children: the gift of a childhood like her mother gave her, “refashioned” for them.

Giving to others via a refashioned life is one of the themes at the heart of Belonging. In “A Sturdy Weave,” a rag rug serves as the metaphor for the refashioned life of a grandmother “rolled out functional again” to “protect the next generation of toddling walkers from hardwood.” The poem speaks eloquently to an older woman’s sacrifice of time and a quiet life to care for her family.

“Mount Revelation” reveals other refashioned lives: the lives of mountain families driven off their land “to put soup in bellies” and the lives of the new landowners, who “have gated the way” to their second homes. Kaufmann uses the language of the King James Bible to guide the reader along the ridges of those who have “sold their own inheritance” to those who “failed to build an altar to God, so wend their way down Mount Revelation to sit in pews with their brothers and sisters.” The journey is unflinching, its end a revelation as the congregation

...joins the old quilter

who casts her eyes unto the hills,

sees those mansions through the eye

of her needle as she threads it to bind

together layers of a new comforter.

In this last stanza of “Mount Revelation,” there is a suggestion of reconciliation between the culture of the “old quilter” and that of the wealthy newcomers. The reconciling factor is the sacrament of faith. This same coming together of newcomer with the existing mountain culture is suggested in “These Lost Counties.”

It’s always hard hard hard work,

to make your way in here,

to live in these oldest mountains.

At the end of the poem, the narrator is “among kindred spirits of unlike minds.” The poem concludes with

Here, I find myself

in these Lost Counties,

and I am bound.

In “These Lost Counties,” the narrator has turned her life as a newcomer to western North Carolina’s mountains “into craft into art.” The result is reconciliation in this place “where kindred spirits of unlike minds . . . clear space to test our mettle against the isolation, set our own standards.”

This poet’s standards are measured by the heart; the spirit in her words like that in “Crocus Courage,” the first poem in Belonging. Take this short but spirited collection of poems to that place you go when you need your soul refreshed and let it renew you with the same courage as crocuses that “risk winter . . . and sleep through summer lazy, covertly plotting fresh color.”

Kicking off the Festival on Thursday at 7pm

On Thursday September 8, the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival will kick off the weekend with a locally produced documentary "The Day Carl Sandburg Died" about the important American poet. The free screening will be in the Community Room of the Yancey County Public Library at 7 p.m.

Carl Sandburg died in July of 1967, but director Paul Bonesteel finds his life story and his creative legacy as relevant and provocative as it was in 1916 when his "Chicago Poems" changed American poetry. “Labor unrest, global wars, socialism, immigration and race issues… this was the subject matter that fueled Sandburg for much of his poetry and writing that shocked the world,” comments Bonesteel. “The intensity of his work was over simplified later in his life. He was both an anarchist and a deeply patriotic American.”

"The Day Carl Sandburg Died" was more than six years in the making with a cast of more than twenty notable scholars, performers and Sandburg family members. Sandburg’s daughter Helga Sandburg Crile, Pete Seeger, Norman Corwin and the late Studs Terkel contribute to the film along with contemporary poets Marc Smith, Ted Kooser and others. Also contributing significantly to the film is Sandburg biographer and Winston Salem resident Penelope Niven.

This 84 minute film has been shown at the River Run International Film Festival, the Blue Wiskey Independent Film Festival, and received Honorable Mention at LA New Wave International Film Festival.

To see the entire weekend's schedule of events visit cmlitfest.org

For more about the film and its producers visit thedaycarlsandburgdied.com

Review of "Yancey County" by Elaine Dellinger and Kiesa Kay

Review by Janice Willis Barnett, author of Unicoi County and Limestone Cove.

Part of the appeal of an Images of America book lies in the unexpected photographs found amidst the usual family portraits and school groups. In this pictorial history by Elaine McAlister Dellinger and Kiesa Kay, one of my favorite such photographs is of three midwifes standing in front of a building with long rows of large windows. The brief caption beneath the picture tells us these women were sisters and the large white bag each one holds in her left hand contains the crochet hooks and other instruments they used to deliver babies. The building with the windows isn’t identified. This “appetizer” nature of the captions usually found in Arcadia pictorial histories is one of the things that make them so appealing. The more succinct the caption and provocative the picture, the more it stirs our imagination.

Dellinger and Kay’s book features photographs related to Yancey’s cultural history from the late 1800s to the present, including its legacy as a mountainous county rich in natural resources. Yancey’s relationship to its abundant waters is illustrated in pictures of its rivers and old bridges and mills. Images of mica mines, timber operations, and the old bowl factory from 1907 also help preserve the county’s resource history. Farm life from bygone days is pictured in the chapter titled, “Sweet Taters, Corn, and Tobacco.” The chapter titled “Down the Dirt Road” includes many photographs of families whose roots go way back in Yancey’s early history.

One of the distinctions of the book is the obvious care the authors took to include photographs portraying aspects of mountain religious life. The opening chapter features creek baptisms, old-time preachers, faith groups, and even Decoration Day celebrations.

Other features of Dellinger and Kay’s book that illustrate their efforts to include as many aspects of Yancey’s history as possible can be seen in images related to the Shirley Barnett Whiteside story. Whiteside’s admission to the school system ended segregation in the county before the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The book also contains a few images related to Celo, the alternative community founded by Arthur Morgan in 1937.

Dellinger and Kay have done well in their efforts to preserve in images and words this part of beautiful Yancey County’s history and heritage.

Dellinger will present her book and stories at the History Museum at 4:30 on Friday and Saturday.

Review of "Brooklyn Nine" by Alan Gratz

Reviewed by Luke Antinori, an 8th grader at Cane River Middle School who plays baseball and is an avid reader.

The Brooklyn Nine is a little untraditional in the way it’s written, because it’s told in 9 “innings.” Each inning tells the story of a generation in the same family’s history, starting in 1845, when a German boy stows away on a ship and goes to America to be with his uncle. The second generation is the

little German boy’s son, who is fighting in the Civil War. The seventh inning takes place in 1957, Brooklyn New York. A boy named Jimmy Flint gets into a fight over baseball cards with a bully who’s bigger than him. The eighth inning is dedicated to Michael Flint, who may or may not have thrown a perfect game on a warm summer day in 1981. The common line that prevails through time is each character’s love for America’s favorite pastime, baseball.

All throughout the book, someone from this family is connected to a piece of our nation’s history. Starting in the first generation, Felix Schneider helps stop the 1845 fire of Manhattan. His son is a Union soldier in the Civil War. In the fourth inning Walter Snider, a boy living in Coney Island, faces the issue of segregation. After that episode, the characters’ direct involvement in historic events become less and less until the 9th inning which has no tie-in to history.

Overall The Brooklyn Nine was an excellent book, and I would recommend it

to anyone over the age of 11 who enjoys the game of baseball. I really liked the fact that it had so many characters, and you got to learn all about them. I could see traits of their parents in them. The book made me feel like I had grown up with every single kid and I knew them very well. I read it cover to

cover in one sitting. That’s how good it is.

Gratz' most recent book is Fantasy Baseball.

Review of "Dogs" by Abigail DeWitt

Dogs a novel by Abigail DeWitt

Review by Joy Boothe

In the prologue DeWitt’s protagonist Molly tells us, “What breaks my heart is the begging, the shamelessness of a dog’s desire. A dog will follow you around, matching its pace to yours-only a little more eager-even after you’ve pushed it away. Say no like you mean it and it follows you with its eyes, whimpering, thumping its tale.” What breaks Molly’s heart about dogs will end up enlightening and breaking the reader’s heart about Molly.

Abigail DeWitt is a brave and as Lee Smith stated “extravagantly talented” writer. Like all really good stories Dogs has often startling layers of meaning along with humor that rings unfailingly true. Avoid gulping down this richly crafted novel. Sip slowly and much will be revealed. Molly Moore (self-proclaimed bad girl) is fourteen as the story begins. In Hebrew, Molly is the diminutive of Mary-also meaning wished for child-also meaning rebellion and bitter. The English meaning of Molly is “of the sea”. Dewitt indeed takes us diving as deeply as we are willing to go to look behind the many masks Molly puts on to survive emotionally unavailable, flawed and ultimately very human parents. Attempting to find her place amidst the chaos and often parallel struggles of her four siblings and best friend Becky-Molly while blessed with intelligence and what remains of her childhood innocence explores and escapes by playing in the yard with Buttercup her dog moving on heartbreakingly soon tothe escapes of her family and friends -sex, food, tobacco and alcohol amongst them. DeWitt’s strong narrative coupled with sensitivity and insight into her characters keeps Dogs from the stereotypes sometimes found in coming of age stories. Told in a series of flashbacks when as an adult and parent Molly begins to face the truths of her life she meets head on with one of her biggest challenges- how to come to terms with the knowledge that her father a highly respected judge has committed and kept hidden a heinous crime. “He’s dead himself now-he died in the crook of my arm this morning and now, if I want , I can prove what people only thought… .”

Set in the hot political and physical landscape of Texas in the 1970’s and ‘80s the heat generated byAbigail Dewitt’s Dogs will linger long after you put her book down.

The Secret Gardeners Critique Group

This critique group will present a panel discussion at the festival about how to form a critique group -- what they've learned from each other and how they support each other as they seek publication. This was first posted on Constance Lombardo's blog.

THE SECRET GARDENERS

Five years ago, I moved to Asheville, joined SCBWI and decided to form a critique group. I found another writer/illustrator with the same goal. We scheduled and advertised our first meeting. Asheville is full of artists and writers, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the amount of people who showed up– ten, I think. A mix of picture book to YA writers and illustrators. Wow, I thought, this is going to be easy!

We worked out some logistics: we’d meet twice a month at our favorite local bookstore, Malaprops, we’d read our work and offer feedback at meetings, leaving the first 20 minutes for chatting (hopefully on book-related subjects!) And we would use the ‘sandwich’ rule - a positive statement about the writing first, then discuss what might need work, close with another positive statement.

Four years later, the last survivor from that first group to our current configuration is me. People moved away. One of us had twins. Someone else had surgery. Others decided they didn’t have time for the group. Change is part of life, right?

Over the years, we’ve had people show up once, after being told that a commitment was required to share work for feedback, and then never return. (We now have a rule that you must attend at least one meeting before you can share.)
We’ve had people show up only when they wanted to share their own work. (new rule: you must attend at least one of our twice a month meetings regularly to remain in the group)

We had one woman who left the group, saying we were all mean. (more conversation on keeping things positive)
We’ve had some intense chatters. (I’ve been guilty of this at times. Reminders about staying on-topic)
And we’ve had some serious personality clashes. New York personalities (myself and others) vs. Southern personalities. We’re still working on that one.

What have we done best over the years?

About a year ago, when our group hit eight committed writers and illustrators who attend and share regularly, we decided to close the group. Most of us are SCBWI members and it’s a requirement for any new members, when we do have an opening. We wrote down a list of Intentions and Rules, including some previously mentioned. We now post our work (especially longer YA or MG chapters) the week before we meet.

We’ve had local authors (Allan Wolf, Alan Gratz) and a local illustrator (Laura Bryant) speak to us about their journeys. A local editor (Joy Neaves) also spoke to our group. We’ve learned a lot from these meetings. And we picked a name. That was interesting. As we threw out ideas, I realized that I am attached to my concept of the group and that some of the names were just not acceptable to me. (New rule: any major change had to be ok’d by all members.) We made a list of potential names:

• Monkeys with Typewriters
• Make Way for Madeline
• Wonderlanders
• The Inksters
• The Secret Gardeners

We all voted and happily agreed. We are now The Secret Gardeners.

An illustrator from our group (Holly McGee) was pulled from the slush pile to illustrate her first picture book from Kane/Miller, Hush Little Beachcomber by Dianne Moritz. (Hooray!) Author/illustrator Kit Grady has a new book out, A Necklace for Jiggsy (Hooray!) Megan Shepherd’s YA novel The Madman’s Daughter helped her secure an excellent agent and will be published by Balzer & Bray in 2013, as the first of a three book deal (Yahoo!) And we recently had another published author join us, Karen Miller (Monsters and Water Beasts: Creatures of Fact or Fiction?) We’ve been published in our Carolinas chapter newsletter The Pen & Palette and in the SCBWI Bulletin, cheering each other on all the way. We celebrate each other through our successes and commiserate over our (numerous!) rejection letters. We share knowledge (agent lists) and ask questions (how to write an effective query?) We attend conferences together and hang out in the hotel bar talking late into the night. Sometimes we have pillow fights.
We’ve come to know each other, our work, our writing/illustrating styles, our strengths and weaknesses, and our dreams. We’ve come to appreciate each other, to understand what we’re each trying to accomplish, to be encouraging, and to offer the kind of feedback that makes us all work harder to deliver our best.

And we have fun! We went to see Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix together when it first came out. We’ve met for birthday celebration meetings at the Chocolate Lounge (which is as wonderful as it sounds!) We celebrated Megan’s recent three-book deal at a local Champagne bar.

The Secret Gardeners is more than a fabulous critique group. We are also a group of wonderfully supportive friends.