On the Southern Literary Trail discussion

It's time to consider what we will read in August, 2019. I am now accepting nominations for our group reads. Nominations will remain open until we have received six nominations in the Pre and Post 1980 categories or until June 20, 2019, whichever occurs first.

As always, happy reading--

Lawyer

I know almost everyone here has already read this, but I have it in line and love to have company reading...so, I humbly nominate The Tall Woman by Wilma Dykeman for pre-1980.

Sara I am always up for a reread of one of my all time favs! Great choice. My cat is named after this author, just a small tidbit about how weird we are.

Could I nominate (again ) Pudd'nhead wilson please another bash it might get pucked :)

Laura wrote: "Sara I am always up for a reread of one of my all time favs! Great choice. My cat is named after this author, just a small tidbit about how weird we are."

You are one of the reasons I added this to my TBR (far too long ago). LOL. Our poor cats--I had one named Shakespeare.

Oops I meant picked

I would like to nominate In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow for post 1980 August read.
I would like to nominate Suttree by Cormac McCarthy for pre 1980 August read.

Note: I noticed that John MacDonald author of Cape Fear was not born in the South. I questioned that and was told by Kim Kaso, a group member, that it doesn't matter where the author was born or lives. Good to know, thus I nominate Cormac McCarthy's Suttree. McCarthy is from Rhode Island.

Sara I would love to read that with some company :-)

My library does not have a copy of Tall Woman but there's a mass market paperback for sale on Amazon for $895.00 🤣 Are they serious?!

I got a copy from Betterworldbooks.com for $3.98...yep, those people are dreaming.

I'll nominate the following:

Pre-1980
The Amulet by Michael McDowell
Let's shake things up with a little Southern-fried horror.

Post-1980
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight
This book is unique in that it's set in a Gullah-speaking village in South Carolina. They are a unique group of African Americans from the lowcountry of SC who speak their own creole language which is unfortunately dying off. This book has good reviews, and although I don't see any ebooks available, it's available cheaply as a used paperback.

Sara wrote: "I know almost everyone here has already read this, but I have it in line and love to have company reading...so, I humbly nominate The Tall Woman by Wilma Dykeman for p..."

This is a classic. Sara, I'm happy to accept your nomination as a Pre-1980 group read.

Jane wrote: "Could I nominate (again ) Pudd'nhead wilson please another bash it might get pucked :)"

Jane, you certainly may. Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain is nominated Pre-1980. :)

From the gr summary:

At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.

Judi wrote: "I would like to nominate In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow for post 1980 August read.
I would like to nominate Suttree by Cormac McCarthy for pre 1980 August read.

Note: I noticed that Jo..."

Judi, In West Mills byDe'Shawn Charles Winslow is nominated Post-1980.

From the gr summary:

Azalea “Knot” Centre is determined to live life as she pleases. Let the people of West Mills say what they will; the neighbors’ gossip won’t keep Knot from what she loves best: cheap moonshine, nineteenth-century literature, and the company of men. And yet, Knot is starting to learn that her freedom comes at a high price. Alone in her one-room shack, ostracized from her relatives and cut off from her hometown, Knot turns to her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, in search of some semblance of family and home.

Otis Lee is eager to help. A lifelong fixer, Otis Lee is determined to steer his friends and family away from decisions that will cause them heartache and ridicule. After his failed attempt as a teenager to help his older sister, Otis Lee discovers a possible path to redemption in the chaos Knot brings to his doorstep. But while he’s busy trying to fix Knot’s life, Otis Lee finds himself powerless to repair the many troubles within his own family, as the long-buried secrets of his troubled past begin to come to light.

Set in an African American community in rural North Carolina from 1941 to 1987, In West Mills is a magnificent, big-hearted small-town story about family, friendship, storytelling, and the redemptive power of love.

Also, Suttree by Cormac McCarthy is nominated Pre-1980.

A note about the birthplace of authors: John D. MacDonald adopted Florida as his home after retiring from the Air Force. Cormac McCarthy, although born in Rhode Island, grew up in Tennessee. Both are rightly considered Southern authors.

Warren wrote: "I'll nominate the following:

Pre-1980
The Amulet by Michael McDowell
Let's shake things up with a little Southern-fried horror.

Post-1980
[book:I Been in Sorrow's Ki..."

Thanks, Warren. Both your nominations are accepted in their respective categories.

Thanks. I understand now. Greg Isles, John MacDonald, Cormac McCarthy and Susan Straight qualify as Southern writers because they have lived in the South for an extended period of their lives.

POST 1980 nomination:
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton

From the GR summary:
After seeing the death of his younger brother in a terrible home accident, fourteen-year-old Kevin and his grieving mother are sent for the summer to live with Kevin's grandfather. In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer will affect the entire town of Medgar, Kentucky.
Medgar is beset by a massive mountaintop removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Kevin's grandfather and others in town attempt to rally the citizens against the "company" and its powerful owner to stop the plunder of their mountain heritage. When Buzzy witnesses a brutal hate crime, a sequence is set in play that tests Buzzy and Kevin to their absolute limits in an epic struggle for survival in the Kentucky mountains.

Post 1980's nomination: Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted–thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.

Pre-1980

Weeds

First published in 1923, Weeds is set amid the tobacco tenant farms of rural Kentucky. This pioneering naturalist novel tells the story of a hard-working, spirited young woman who finds herself in a soul-destroying battle with the imprisoning duties of motherhood and of managing an impoverished household. The novel is particularly noteworthy for its heartbreaking depiction of a woman who suffers not from a lack of love, but from an unrequited longing for self-expression and freedom. (less)

Post 1980
Mourning Dove

The heart has a home when it has an ally. If Millie Crossan doesn't know anything else, she knows this one truth simply because her brother Finley grew up beside her. Charismatic Finley, eighteen months her senior, becomes Millie's guide when their mother Posey leaves their father and moves her children from Minnesota to Memphis shortly after Millie's tenth birthday.

Memphis is a world foreign to Millie and Finley. This is the 1970s Memphis, the genteel world of their mother's upbringing and vastly different from anything they've ever known. Here they are the outsiders. Here, they only have each other. And here, as the years fold over themselves, they mature in a manicured Southern culture where they learn firsthand that much of what glitters isn't gold. Nuance, tradition, and Southern eccentrics flavor Millie and Finley's world as they find their way to belonging.

But what hidden variables take their shared history to leave both brother and sister at such disparate ends? (less)

IF Texas counts as Southern i nominate for pre 1980 "Giant" by Edna Ferber. And for post-1980 "News of the World" by Paulette Giles.
i hope i placed the books in nomination in the proper way: by an additional comment in the sub-topic.
Also a question: where can i find the list of the monthly group reads from the past?
Thank you.

Nancy, go to the group bookshelf to find our previous reads.

It appears that we have six nominations in each category. If so, the nominations are now closed.

The nominations for books published before 1980:
1. The Tall Woman, by Wilma Dykeman
2. Pudd'nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain
3. Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy
4. The Amulet, by Michael McDowell
5. Weeds, by Edith Summers Kelley
6. Giant, by Edna Ferber

The nominations for books published after 1980:
1. In West Mills, by De'Shawn Charles Winslow
2. I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, by Susan Straight
3. The Secret Wisdom of the Earth, by Christopher Scotton
4. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep
5. Mourning Dove, by Claire Fullerton
6. News of the World, by Paulette Jiles

The polls should be posted later today.

The Polls are up and running for the August selections. There is a good mix of new nominations and requests for books we have enjoyed in the past.

For the Pre-1980 poll, Vote here!

For the Post-1980 poll, Vote here!

The discussions boards are up and running for the August selections. They can be found here:

For This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash, (Moderator’s Choice):
Initial Impressions: This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash, April, 2019
Final Impressions: This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash, April, 2019


For Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy, (Pre-1980):
Initial Impressions: Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy, April 2019
Final Impressions: Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy, April 2019

For `Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep, (Post-1980):
Initial Impressions: Furious Hours, by Casey Cep, August 2019
Final Impressions: Furious Hours, by Casey Cep, August 2019

Happy reading!