This week Bookshelf previews some highlights of Atlanta’s other big book festival and revisits a horrific story of murder and mayhem in western Georgia.
Politics and show biz: Back in person after two years of virtual programming, the Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA) returns Nov. 3, and it features a smart, diverse lineup of top-shelf authors, as usual.
The 16-day event boasts a little bit of everything, from historical fiction to Hollywood memoirs, but this year politics is a topic that is front and center. On opening night, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham will discuss his brand-new biography “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle” (Penguin Random House, $40). It paints a very human portrait of the 16th president, including his flaws and the origins of his moral conviction to end slavery.
According to a starred Kirkus review, “The author provides in-depth analysis of Lincoln’s career as president and on how his thoughts on the issues of slavery and the status of African Americans changed during the course of the war, right up to the Union victory.”
Meacham will be in conversation with Bill Nigut, host and executive producer of “Political Rewind” for Georgia Public Broadcasting.
On Nov. 13, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, will talk about her book, “If You Want Something Done” (MacMillan, $26.99). Part memoir and part appreciation for other women trailblazers, it highlights leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Jeane Kirkpatrick.
And former congressman and ambassador to the U.N. Andrew Young will be in conversation with AJC reporter Ernie Suggs, who penned the biography “The Many Lives of Andrew Young” (NewSouth Books, $60) on Nov. 12.
Bringing a little stardust to the proceedings are two events featuring daughters talking about their celebrity parents. Clea Newman Soderlund will talk about her father, the subject of “Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man” (Penguin Random House, $32), on Nov. 15. The book is a candid telling of the actor’s life from his troubled childhood to stardom to his marriage with Joanne Woodward, culled from oral histories collected from his friends, family and associates in the ‘80s.
Melissa Rivers, author of “Lies My Mother Told Me” (Post Hill Press, $28), talks about her third book about her famous mother, comedian Joan Rivers on Nov. 5.
Other festival highlights include Bernie Marcus, who discusses his memoir “Kick Up Some Dust: Lessons from the Co-Founder of Home Depot on Thinking Big, Giving Back and Doing It Yourself” (HarperCollins, $29.99), on Nov. 6, and Julia Haart, star of the Netflix reality series “My Unorthodox Life” (Crown, $28.99), talking about her book “Brazen” that chronicles her escape from an extremist religious sect on Nov. 9.
The Book Festival of the MJCCA runs Nov. 3-19 at the Marcus Jewish Community Center at 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Ticket prices vary. For details go to atlantajcc.org.
Credit: Mercer University Press
Credit: Mercer University Press
Paging Netflix: People don’t talk much about it anymore, but if you lived in Georgia in the late ‘70s, you may well have been held in the grips of terror — especially if you were a woman in your golden years living alone in Columbus. That’s because a serial killer was on the rampage, targeting women in their 70s and 80s.
Carlton Gary was eventually apprehended and convicted of some of the murders, but it was assumed he committed them all because they followed the same pattern. Gaining access through a window or back door, he would rape the women and strangle them with their undergarments. He was executed in 2018.
“The Columbus Stocking Strangler” (Mercer University Press, $35) is a meticulously researched account of the crimes, Gary’s capture, his trial and the aftermath written by William Rawlings. A native of Sandersville, where he practices medicine, Rawlings is the author of 12 books, both fiction and nonfiction, but this one was his most challenging one yet.
“The story of the Columbus Strangler is, without a doubt, the most complicated tale that I have ever attempted to put into words. Spanning in its entirety more than four decades, I estimate the written record, which includes transcripts and other court records, police reports, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as miscellaneous related documents, to be in excess of 15,000 pages,” he writes in the author’s note.
A couple of bizarre things contributed to the weirdness of this case. Because the victims were white and the suspect was Black, racial tensions quickly mounted, especially after the Ku Klux Klan threatened to patrol the streets of Columbus.
Then, The Forces of Evil emerged. The police department began receiving letters from what purported to be an organization that went by that name, claiming it would kidnap and kill Black women, one at a time, until the Stocking Strangler was captured. Three bodies were recovered: two sex workers and a soldier from Fort Benning. Shockingly, Columbus had a second serial killer: Pvt. William Henry Hance, a Black ammunition handler for the 10th Artillery, who was using the Stocking Strangler to cover up his crimes. He was quickly apprehended, convicted and executed in 1994.
Rawlings has a “just the facts” style of writing. What the book lacks in narrative flourishes it makes up for in its research and clean, concise prose that clearly lays out all the twists and turns in this complicated case.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Contact her at svanatten@ajc.com, and follow her on Twitter at @svanatten.
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