South Carolina Books

This is my favorite of Naomi Nye's books. She has such a gift for describing human experiences and some of her stories make me cry and laugh at the same time.

Her essays read like poetry. This book is wonderful

Naomi Shihab Nye is a bridge-builder. She reaches out to those of other cultures, and always expresses understanding of those sometimes forgotten in our society. A good book for all ages!

Possibly the best book in this genre. Nye's essays are thought provoking because they could happen in any of our lives. If you are going to be stranded on an island, take this book with you.

Being born and reared in NC is the best of all worlds - coast to mtns. This book is a wonderful pictorial glimpse into our State at the holiday season along with good recipes etc. I'm trying to find copies for "all my children". It is a joy at Christmas or anytime to peruse this book.

The best Christmas book I've ever bought. The photos are beautiful, the recipes yummy, and the stories bring back many happy Christmas memories. My family and friends had fun looking at the pictures and saying "I've been there."

With my father as the photographer (David Crosby), I highly suggest this book as a Christmas gift for anyone! I traveled with him on his photography expedition and the sites he captured are as they appear in the book; colorful and very alive! Ms. Kiefer does a wonderful job on books, and this is only one of her three works of art.

This beautiful book is full of the sights (and smells) of North Carolina. If you've never been here before you'll be on the next airplane out. And if you're a native you'll know what you don't want to leave

Patrick O'Kelley seems to have covered every Revolutionary War Battle and Skirmish during 1771-1779 for N.C & S.C. in this book. He has done the same for 1780, 1781 & 1782 in his other books. These are a must have for the Revolutionary War enthusiast or researcher.

While the title might sound like a late night movie, it is a statement from the famous Quaker General, Nathaniel Green, describing the fighting in the Southern Campaign. This is not a book that you take home for a good read, but a well-documented reference you keep as a handy tool. If you had ancestors that participated in the battles in Georgia or South Carolina you will find this a useful book. The author has started with the Battle of Alamance, North Carolina, that actually preceded the Revolutionary War in 1771 and ends with the failed attempt by the Patriots and French to retake Savannah, GA, in 1779. Considered the first volume of three Mr. O'Kelley plans to write, every skirmish, sea battle and engagement that is known is included with an order of battle format. This book lists the units that participated, key leaders, casualties and overview of the engagements. This is an excellent tool for compatriots who are doing history programs for local schools.

The book is written in a terse military style, which only adds to the book. It lists every land, naval, battle or skirmish. I could never make any sense of the fuss about the savage fighting in the Carolinas, until I read this book. I can hardly wait to see what happens to Lord Cornwallis's army when he invades the Carolinas in the following volumes. It is a gold mine of Militia unit information.
Dwayne

I bought this book since I was interested in the Revolutionary War in the South. I know of the War Between the States, but I wanted to know more about what came before. Not many books have much in them about the Southern campaign. They only mention Yorktown, or Cowpens. However this book contains everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, about the war in the South. It is not just North and South Carolina, but Georgia too. It is incredibly detailed and it seems that most of the sources are from primary account. This is a huge project that Patrick O'Kelley has tried to put on paper. There will be more volumes, and I can't wait until the next. The book is easy to read and explains what happened in a way that makes the story flow smoothly. I highly recommend it!

Did I say genius? I meant to say she's an artist with words. The photography in this lovely book is truly inspiring, but the writing is really the icing on the cake. (I guess that makes her a baker and a genius!)

Breathtaking, peaceful, extraordinary photography. Makes you feel like you are there. Mr Drapala captures the essence of the Outer Banks. Your experiences are captured through his lens. Heart felt work. Recommended for anyone who has, or wants to experience the ocean, the shoreline, the tranquility.

I live in Pennsylvania but spend one month of every summer in Hatteras, and this book brought me right back there! The photographs are amazing, particularly the full-page color pictures. The book is very well-researched--I didn't know any of the information about Blackbeard until I read the chapter on his exploits on Ocracoke. This book makes me want to go to the Outer Banks right now! I highly recommend it.

I go to the Outer Banks as often as possible, but never often enough. This book takes me there right from my living room. The photography as well as the information contained in the book is outstanding. I found it to be relaxing as well as educational. Because the book has something for everyone, I highly recommend it for all ages.

This is one of my all time favorites. Being raised on a cotton farm in Texas in the depression, I can relate to it entirely. It showed me the close relationship of all southern people and the common heritage even though our farms were a 1,000 miles apart. Many of Ben's relatives were just like mine. And cotton was King. It was the main topic of conversation all year.

An English professor I had in college once berated me at a poker game for recommending this book. He had never heard of it. I gave him a copy. I can only imagine the sardonic moment in which he finally picked it up. He loved it. The book was given to me by a Capitol Hill policeman from North Carolina. This is the sort of book that will help Yankee's (like me)to understand the Old South; a truly liberal and enlightened view. This is one of those books, whose author was struck down early in life, that makes you wonder what might have come from his pen had he lived. These are memoirs, memoirs of the old folks that made up the backbone of the South after the Civil War up to the Great Depression, real, living people whom, thorough these pages, become a delight to get acquainted with.

From a member of the next generation with recollections and experiences of a similar nature, I can assure you that this book gives a highly accurate account of what it was like growing up in the rural South. The next best book of this nature, and one similar to it is "Run With the Horsemen", by Ferol Sams. Although "Run With the Horsemen" is classed as a novel, it accurately portrays life in the rural South during the Great Depression. Please don't miss reading either of these great books concerning events that occured at a special time and in a very special place.

My first contact with "Red Hills and Cotton" was in 1973; I was 4 years old, and my mother had been given the book as a birthday present by my aunt. When I was old enough, I read the book for myself. Ben Robertson is buried in my hometown, and I recognized much of the geography of which he writes. I also recognize much of the human spirit about which he writes - the spirit of the Southern small farmer.

Although many of the circumstances of the South have changed since this writing (in the early 1940s), the nature of the people has not changed to a great extent. We may not work the fields each day, but our love of God, family, homeland, adventure, loyalty -- all these things remain close to our hearts and lives. Ben Robertson would still have reason to be proud. Would that he had lived longer and written more!

Coburn has produced a heartfelt, tightly paced first novel in which two childhood friends must confront their past after a decade apart. Shifting back-and-forth in time and locales (the South, Seattle), "Remembering Jody" examines such powerful plot themes as love and friendship, guilt and responsibility, madness and family.

A reminiscence about a Jewish girl's coming of age in America's Deep South narrated by witty wordsmith Marsha Rose: "I work part-time in a bookstore. I still don't have a Jewish boyfriend, but while this seems to bother Aunt Eileen, my mother takes the tack of treating Jimbo [the unapproved boyfriend] as if he's a style I will eventually outgrow." The narrator is called "Mashie" by her childhood chum Jody Lurrey, a paranoid schizophrenic who invades Marsha's adult life in Seattle, re-surfacing from semi-happy childhood days to heap heavy guilt upon the narrator's writerly shoulders thereby launching two trips that form the zigzag double helix spine of the book: Trip One is the real-time airplane return to mythical Sparta, the Deep South landscape which triggers Trip Two -- a series of memory dives into the narrator's past, where Marsha/Mashie relives indelible moments of personal history with her eccentric childhood buddy: horseback riding, swimming, smoking marijuana, climbing into bed, having sex, flipping out. Remembering Jody is a solid first-novel debut for Coburn, a free-lance journalist and screenwriter.

Coburn has written a dense first novel about time and memory and the disjunction between past and present, between reality and memory. At its heart, Remembering Jody is a tale of a lost Eden before the eruption of guilt. Dr. Thrailkill, the psychiatrist who treats Jody in Seattle implies the loss of innocence when he remarks to Marsha: "If you mean will he [Jody] ever be who he was before he became ill...." The Diaspora and assimilation form two of the subtextual threads binding this novel together. Almost Biblical in its examination of human weakness, Coburn's work tackles the hard questions of family, duty, love, sex, and belonging. Marsha Rose, the narrator, wants desperately for Jody, her childhood friend and onetime lover to belong, to be home, but the powerful split between past and present can't be overcome so she creates her own Jody in her head: "I told him anyway, in my head, where I could address a grown-up Jody of my own invention: I've lived there a long time, but it's not really home, either..." As with all Odysseys, Remembering Jody, tells two stories. The narrator's inner journey of discovery is wrapped within the physical journey of a road story. The near-fusion of the protagonist, Marsha, and her catalyst, Jody, could not be clearer: "I'm holding his hand because at this moment, he hardly seems separate from me at all." Because Jody doesn't know where he belongs, Marsha escorts him home. In an allegorical passage that speaks to the inner and the outer journeys, Jody tells Marsha the story of the boy, Richard, who stowed away on a plane in Australia so that he might get to Paris: "The coolest thing is that he'd never been to Paris before in his life, but he knew that was where he belonged." Here the author's technique at blending the inner and the outer tales is unmatched. At the conclusion of the novel, Jody returns to his safe haven, but not without having an effect on those around him: "...his reentry into our lives over the next few days made us all seem kind of inside-out, seams showing and threads unraveling in ways that were, for a change, fairly obvious."

As a librarian who reads hundreds of pre-publication first novels, I was extremely impressed with this absorbing book. In the space of very few pages, Coburn ably handles several major characters, drawing the reader into their lives. Best of all, the portrait of Southern Jews in a small city is true-to-life. Having spent time in the Jewish community of a place very much like the fictional Sparta, this book made me feel I was back there again. Readers who enjoy reading Kaye Gibbons, Ann Hood or Anna Quindlen will savor this story of relationships. I'm eagerly looking forward to Coburn's next novel.

Wow! This mesmerizing tale of South Carolina - flashing between 1966 and now is taut and disturbing and compelled me to make a new List: SLEEP? Who Needs SLEEP? Page turners - all night long.
It's a "Who Dunnit" and a "Why Dunnit" and yet a well-crafted cousin to both "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "A Time to Kill." Don't waste any more time reading these reviews. Rush your little cursor right up there to that "Add to ShoppingCart" button and get it now, ya hear?! Reviewed by TundraVision

I read Sacrificed Lives on a recent trip to England and was thrilled to find a new, fresh, mystery author. I am a serious mystery buff and so when someone new and good comes along it is always a great day. This is a well written book, with a solid plot, and a topical subject. If you like mysteries you will love Sacrificed Lives. Don't miss it!

As a mystery buff I am always on the lookout for new writers. And every so often I find one that I just can't put down. This was the case with Sacrificed Lives. It is a gripping, beautifully written mystery, full of surprises. This is a book that is bound to keep you on the edge of your seat and, as it did with me,keep you up til the wee hours of the morning. The author is one that we are certainly going to hear from again. I for one, can't wait until her next book rolls off the presses. Don't miss Sacrificed Lives, it's a great read!

I regularly blast through 3-4 mystery's a week [traveling salesman ; )] and most of them do what I ask of them: Keep me mildly entertained on the several flights I take a week. Once in a while tho I am pleasently surprised to find a book that isn't thoroughly predictable OR has wild, tortured plot resolutions OR carboard characters or some combination of the bunch. This is such a book. From the opening page you are drawn into a world that is credible and suspenseful. If you like a good mystery as much as I do you will love Sacrificed Lives. My only regret is that I have apparently discovered this author at the start of her career. How long til the next book Ms. Brackett!!??

Totally absorbing, wonderful read about the South Carolina Low Country and it's Gullah people. I loved it.

Written by former plantation mistress Julia Peterkin, Scarlet Sister Mary is a novel of intellect, individualism, coltish word play, tradition and most importantly, respect. The novel, like, Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Color Purple, is written in an old southern vernacular, and it tells the story of Sister Mary or Si May-e, a young and sprightly woman at the novel's start. It is some time after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and freedon (used loosely, historically speaking), has come for those individuals who were field slaves or indentured servants. Their opportunity to flee has come, to seek opportunities for self and financial betterment. For some, however, betterment is not up north or anywhere else in the country; it is exactly where it is: the native coastal terrain of South Carolina - the setting for the novel. Religion, faith, folklore, generational history and magic are the ties that bind the folksy and hard working men and women of the Quarters. Dignity and peacefulness does not come from being nomadic, as was in the case of the pioneers to the Midwest and far West; it is closer. It is in the hoeing, the field labor, the mud between the crevices of the rough and crackling flesh. It is in the earth. To combat the joyous harshness of the work is love and a family. And thus, Sister Mary comes into the picture; she is at the marrying age, and July, her suitor, is ready to be her protector and provider. Or so one would believe. Using faith in lore and mythology, Sister Mary's marriage is almost doomed from the start: "'Do, Master, look down and see what a rat is done!' Mary's heart flew up into her mouth. Cold chills ran over her as she ran to see what happened. There it was, a great hole gnawed deep into the bride's cake's tender meat...she fell into bitter dumb sobs...Such bad luck was hard to face." (p.29) And it only advances to something worse via the aid of a love charm and another woman's insatiable lust for the groom's affections. Time passes, and Mary is all alone with her son Unex (shortened for Unexpected). A suffocating cover of depression smothers Sister Mary, and as time heals old wounds, Mary rises into a life of self-satisfaction and sexual gratification. She enters the dominion of sin and religious transgression; she is altered in the eyes of those around her. From Sister Mary, she becomes Scarlet Sister Mary - red with hungry passion as the adjective implies. She has a flock of children, but they are not heart children, as in the case of Unex, but they are passion, lust children. Redemption is nil, and her destiny upon her final breath (in the eyes of her brethren) is clearly understood; her spirit, her soul, is scudding rapidly to the flaming and billowing sulphur pitts of hell. Can redemption and acceptance ever come into her grasp? Will peace ever rectify the wrongs incurred in her heart and mind? Her somewhat sardonic life philosophy and world-weary actions narrow down the chances for hope. But that hand-clenching curiosity does get solved. Banned in Boston when it was first published in 1928 and winner of the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Scarlet Sister Mary is a classic among classics - lyrical in prose and description, vivid in the intellectual exploration of the "Negro question" - (vii) and complex as well as humane. But it is by no means an accurate representation of a specific catagory of people. Consequently, the work, although brilliant, is slightly antiquated and beguiling.

This delightful story by Julie Peterkin caught the eyes and surely the hearts of the committee to garner the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. Mary has the misfortune to become besot by July, the biggest rascal in the Quarters. The love-charm that Old Daddy Cudjoe makes for her comes too late to win back July as he drops out of sight with Cinder and is lost from Mary's life for the next twenty years. Mary goes on to be the Venus of the Quarters eventually having nine children by an untold litany of befogged lovers. A word of advice Mary gives to Seraphine, her eldest daughter, is telling of her view of men. "But don' never let yousef tink on one man all de time. It'll run you crazy if it don't kill you." After the death of her first-born son, Unex, Mary undergoes a religious conversion and welcomed back into the Heaven's Gate Church. But she secretly holds something in reserve.

Scarlet Sister Mary is the story of a free-spirited woman's life in the post-Emancipation South. It is unique in its portrayal of an African-American community as capable of independent existence in the South at that time. The culture of the community is portrayed most interestingly and permeates through the religious, spiritual and even medical undertones of story. While Peterkin tells a poetic tale of an independent, strong, rebellious woman (of whom you grow dearly fond, and cannot help but cheer her on in her resistance), one finds it hard to wonder how accurate a picture Peterkin paints as one who viewed African-Americans in the South rather than lived as an African-American in the South. But all in all, this book is a must read (and if you attempt to read it as you would imagine people read the book when it was first published, you have a most scandalous story of taboo story before your eyes!)

Collins not only does a superior job of telling the tales, but also characterizing the people who lived them. At Wake Forest it is not so much the story as the people. The university is one built upon relationships. This is a book for any generation of Wake Forest or ACC fan because one can open it and connect to the players and coaches with whom they are familiar. Collins offers an accurate and unbiased account. He has witnessed many of the events he described in this book first-hand as a veteran journalist and Wake Forest beat reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, Wake Forest's hometown newspaper. Open to any page and enjoy!

It's been almost a century since basketball started at Wake Forest (1906). And from that beginning, not long after basketball was invented, there has been time to develop a lot of history. A history of events, certainly, but especially a history of people: the team, the players, the coaches.

Dan Collins has covered Wake Forest for the Winston-Salem Journal since 1978. He's collected a century worth of stories into this small book. It's clearly aimed at the Wake Forest fan. This is not basketball in general, this is Wake Forest basketball. Well maybe a little bit about North Carolina basketball, but not much.

Beyond that, the writing is excellent, it flows quickly and is absolutely filled with amusing anecdotes. If you're a fan....

This book is an excellent read, not just for Wake Forest fans, but for all sports fans. I recommend it highly!

Collins effectively presents interesting and informative anecdotes on Wake Basketball, its players and coaches. A pleasant read for any Deacon fan.

I wrote a review here when this book first came out, and somehow it's gone by the wayside, so here's part II which is more or less a faint memory of the first.

Southerners often provide excellent characters for stories. Perhaps it's all the sweet potatoes, fried chicken, and mushroom-soup based casseroles that are consumed south of the Mason-Dixon that creates these masterful personality quirks that George captures so well. Every character he creates, I can not only envision, but tell you who they're related to, where they go to church, and what their drink of choice is.

George, much like a character out of a Tom Waits song himself, writes from experiences and observations. He places the reader right in the heart of his narrators and creates a world around that's real enough to smell.

He's just brilliant. The book...also brilliant.

George Singleton is one of those writers who appears regularly in the best of quarterlies and reviews: Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Glimmer Train, Southern Review, even a couple stories in Playboy. This deserved collection has been a long time coming.

And this is no lie: this boy can write. His stories penetrate the South, depicting narrators in all manner of fixes (taping over a wife's sonogram, caulking a house to within an inch of its life, reporting on a fake tornado, helping blind men shoot pool) in a prose that is as elegant as the Peabody, as savory as barbecue. He nails the Southern experience (call it, perhaps, Good Ol Boy lit), creating empathetic characters and the funniest situations this side the Mississippi.

There are classics here ("Crawl Space," "Outlaw Head and Tail," and the title story jump immediately to mind), stories that deserve to be read for generations to come.

Treat yourself: try this book.

No one writes like George Singleton. Every short story in this grand collection -- as good as, if not better than, J.D. Salinger's NINE STORIES -- is a classic gem. Told with tongue-in-cheek, "These People Are Us" views the world in Singleton's own inimitable vision, sliding through the cracks of life with a grand sweep. In stories that have been published in Playboy, Georgia Literary Review and other literary quarterlies, this collection sings as no other song can be sung. I wouldn't be a bit suprised if Singleton doesn't win the biggest awards in the land with this, his first book.

With that we begin a trip, a trip down the backroads of the south. A trip that includes dogs benesth the porch, recycled beer cans, and midget plumbers! Everything that makes the South great!
George has replaced Raymond Carver as my favorite short story writer.