Among fans of Southern literature, all eyes are on Alabama this summer.
July promises the long-awaited release of Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman,” a sequel set 20 years after “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The messy controversy over the book, including allegations that the author was duped into releasing the “lost” manuscript and an investigation into elder abuse (later dismissed), have added intrigue to the already considerable hype.
But there’s much more to this summer’s book offerings than the Finch family drama. Oddly enough, some of Lee’s themes of homecoming and parent-child reconciliation figure prominently in several of the season’s most titillating titles.
Here’s a roundup of 10 new books with Southern connections that (mostly) rise above the usual clichés of vacation reading.
Fiction
‘Minnow’ by James E. McTeer II
A young boy with a single dollar bill burning a hole in his leather billfold, a bedridden father dying of lung sickness, a witch doctor who wears purple glasses “so he can see into your soul”: James E. McTeer’s debut sounds like the stuff of Karen Russell, but an equally apt comparison might be Roald Dahl. McTeer won the South Carolina First Novel Prize for this Lowcountry fable set on the Sea Islands. The atmosphere of magic and menace becomes more pervasive as the boy, Minnow, is sent to retrieve “goofer dust” from the grave of a legendary hoodoo man, needed to heal his ailing father. It’s a meandering journey full of twists, chills and heartbreak. (Hub City Press, May)
‘The Library at Mount Char’ by Scott Hawkins
At the start of this dark and enticing debut, our heroine, Carolyn, is walking barefoot and covered in blood along a lonely highway, a murder weapon hidden in her dress. Atlanta author Scott Hawkins quickly escalates the mystery with news that Carolyn is one of a dozen “librarians,” the adopted children of a sorcerer who could stop time and summon lightning. Trouble is, Father’s gone missing. His scattered pupils must try to blend in with normal Americans while vying to inherit his library. Hawkins, a software engineer who grew up in South Carolina, invites readers into a believable but beguiling world alive with sinister possibilities. (Crown, June)
‘The Idea of Love’ by Patti Callahan Henry
He’s writing a travel book about historic battlefields along the Carolina coast; she’s in mourning after losing her husband in a boating accident. What could go wrong? Plenty, because both Hunter and Ella are lying through their teeth. Henry’s 11th novel, similar in some ways to last summer’s “The Stories We Tell,” considers the blurred lines between truth and deception and the lengths people will go to for the sake of finding happiness. (St. Martin’s, June)
‘Love May Fail’ by Matthew Quick
As in Quick’s “The Silver Linings Playbook,” this fast-paced comedy involves another larger-than-life character returning home on a quest for personal reinvention — but adds three other misfit narrators to the mix. Portia Kane escapes Florida and her thankless marriage to a pornography mogul in search of the high school teacher who once told her, “Remember — you become exactly whomever you choose to be.” Sadly, he hasn’t followed his own advice. A violent episode has left him broken and hopeless. Quick, who lives on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, presents the screwball cast with affection and wit, even while putting each of them through the ringer of life. (Harper, June)
‘A Clear View of the Southern Sky: Stories’ by Mary Hood
Hood, a 2014 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, delivers 10 striking stories about women making difficult decisions. In “Mad Woman in the Attic,” Connie chooses to have her tattoos laser-removed to appease her new beau’s mother. Yara, the enigmatic protagonist of the title story, buys a gun to shoot a serial killer she’d seen on television. In the collection’s foreword, Pat Conroy compares Hood to Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, saying she “blew into my reading life with hurricane force winds” — a fitting description of these unsettling tales. (Story River, July)
‘How to Write a Novel’ by Melanie Sumner
The author teaches fiction writing at Kennesaw State University, but this is no self-help manual for would-be novelists. It’s a meta-fictional tour de force involving 12-year-old Aristotle “Aris” Thibodeau, who believes following the advice in book titled “Write a Novel in Thirty Days!” will help her English professor mother reboot her life. Sumner brings a knowing, tongue-in-cheek sparkle to discussions of writing workshop chestnuts such as rising action and climax, never losing sight of the humanity of her characters and the unpredictable nature of reality. (Vintage, August)
Nonfiction
‘Ordinary Light’ by Tracy K. Smith
Though Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith was raised in California, a forced reckoning with her family’s Southern heritage makes for one of the more salient episodes in this effervescent memoir. An extended visit to her grandmother’s house in Leroy, Alabama, offers an uncomfortable glimpse into the racially charged world her parents grew up in during the Civil Rights era. Ghosts of the South continue to haunt the narrator’s evangelical Christian mother; her disapproval of Halloween results in a Casper costume that looks more like a Ku Klux Klan outfit. The spotlight shines on Smith’s delicate prose, which is anything but ordinary and sets the book apart from comparable musings on motherhood. (Knopf, March)
‘The World Is on Fire’ by Joni Tevis
“See Rock City,” says the famous marketing slogan, but you’ll never see the Tennessee tourist attraction the same way after reading Joni Tevis’s moving essay, “Beautiful Beyond Belief: Rock City and Other Fairy Tales of the Atomic Age.” The piece is one of many gems in the hard-to-categorize collection of travelogues and personal essays, with topics ranging from Buddy Holly to the Scissorman, an itinerant hair stylist in South Carolina. Tevis, a former park ranger and cemetery plot seller, teaches at Furman University. (Milkweed Editions, May)
‘A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety’ by Jimmy Carter
Georgia’s favorite former president returns to territory covered in his 2001 memoir, “An Hour Before Daylight,” offering fresh insights into his childhood on a peanut farm, tough years at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and the career choices he and Rosalynn made following the loss of the 1980 reelection campaign. Carter is exceptional in that only four ex-presidents lived to see 90; he marks the occasion with a frank discussion of his regrets and accomplishments, as well as a broad view of global trends from the past half century. (Simon & Schuster, June)
‘Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles’ by Bert Ashe
Ashe, an English professor at the University of Richmond, attempts to “cut through the social noise” and untangle the true meaning of his favorite hairstyle, dreadlocks. “I love black hair because it can be read three related ways: the aesthetic, the political, and the interpersonal,” he writes. This scholarly but accessible (and funny) series of essays takes on all three categories and more, tracing the roots of the style from ancient India through Rastafarian culture and modern sightings in film and music. Beyond its musings on bias and identity, “Twisted” braids in personal accounts of “hair drama” at family reunions and the author’s fraught experiences trying to grow his own dreads. (Agate Bolden, June)
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