The literary feminist fable, for all its PC piety, is hardly a foolproof genre. All too often its didactic intentions succumb to humorlessness, and lifeless, allegorical plotting overtakes the flesh and blood characters. Witness no less... Read More

The author is describing a conversation between her-self and another mother on the first day of school vacation. Her friend, Marilyn: “‘It’s only been four hours. What am I going to do for the next eight weeks?’ ‘Have you tried... Read More

Like a good detective, the latest Meg Darcy mystery hits the ground running and barely takes time to look back. In the first scene, the tough but lovable Darcy is frolicking in bed with her kind-of-girlfriend, Sarah Lindstrom: “She... Read More

Rubin is a beloved figure in the publishing world. As founder of Algonquin Books, he provided a launching pad for Southern writers such as Jill McCorkle, Clyde Edgerton, and Lee Smith at a time when fledgling authors from the hinterlands... Read More

This workmanlike memoir takes Scates from hardscrabble Depression Tennessee to the Pacific Northwest and onward to thirty-five years of exploring America and the world, first as a young merchant seaman, then a fledgling reporter, and... Read More

The “Best of…” anything carries with it the burden of expectation. That which claims to be above the rest is ultimately a matter of taste. Therefore, picking up and reading this collection of personal essays is somewhat similar to... Read More

Despite misogyny, patriarchy, and the established social mores of the pre- and post-Civil War South, there are women, whose lives are detailed in Negotiating Boundaries, who lived to the fullest extent possible in the space dictated by... Read More

In the hourless depths of the night…I grieved for the dreambaby who had died and loved the one who had been born. In Babyface: A Story of Heart and Bones, Jeanne McDermott tells of her life with her second son, Nathaniel, born at... Read More