It’s an end of the year wrap-up! We had a wonderful year here at Blair, our 60th! Not only did we get to celebrate six decades of independent book publishing, we also put out some great new books.
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Our 2014 releases garnered a bevy of great reviews from all over the country. Plus, we were still receiving great reviews (and awards!) for our 2013 books. Below is our wrap up of all the love our authors received this year. To read more about these and all our books, visit our website at blairpub.com.
REVIEWS
JANUARY Voices of Cherokee Women (Fall 2013) Kirkus Reviews
Met Her on the Mountain
Finalist – Thomas Wolfe Award Gold – Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), True Crime Winner – North Carolina Society of Historians Willie Parker Peace History Book Award
Porch Dogs Gold – IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, Animals/Pets Bronze – Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), Animals/Pets
Long Gone Daddies Gold – Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), Regional Fiction (Southeast)
Finalist – Foreword Reviews’ Book of the Year Award
‘Tis the season! If you’re like us at Blair, you’re going to spend some quality time with the people that matter most over the next several weeks. In that spirit, today we’re sharing a guest blog post from Frye Gaillard, the current writer in residence at the University of South Alabama and winner of the prestigious Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction Writing from the University of Alabama. His latest contribution to the literary world is a volume of essays that celebrate the influence of books on his life: The Books That Mattered: A Readers Memoir (NewSouth Books, September 2012).
As a child Gaillard never cared much for fairy tales—“stories of cannibalism and mayhem in which giants and witches, tigers and wolves did their best to eat small children.” But at the age of nine, he discovered Johnny Tremain, a children’s novel of the Revolutionary War, which began a lifetime love affair with books, recounted as a reader’s tribute to the writings that enriched and altered his life. In a series of carefully crafted, often deeply personal essays, Gaillard blends memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore the works of Harper Lee, Anne Frank, James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, John Steinbeck, and many others. As this heartfelt reminiscence makes clear, the books that chose Frye Gaillard shaped him like an extended family.
I think everyone has their first memory with a book that mattered. I can’t remember when I started really reading, but I was definitely the kid with a book propped up around my plate during dinner. My childhood was filled with small books with old library plastic peeling from the covers, with titles like Witch Weed and Time Windowsand Baby-sitters Club, until I was eight, when my mother and I read Jane Eyre together (to be fair, she did most of the reading out loud). I was so proud of myself for making it through a book that thick that I carried the sucker with me and told everyone that I read it. I can’t say that the book changed my perspective or opened my eyes wider to the world–hey, I was only eight! I didn’t find those books until I started reading post-colonial lit in college, but I don’t know if I would have ever made it that far without first conquering Jane Eyre and knowing there was something special about it. And in that respect, it’s one of the books that mattered to me.
Gaillard joins us today to share a bit more insight into the books that mattered to him and what he hopes his memoir will offer others. When you’ve finished reading, tell us which books made an impression in your life. Did Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men shake you to your core? Did Shakespeare’s Hamlet haunt you? Tell us in the comment section.
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Thoughts on The Books That Mattered by Frye Gaillard
I’ve been telling people lately that writing The Books ThatMattered: A Reader’s Memoir is the most pleasurable experience that I have ever had as a writer. There have been other books about other topics that I’ve been happy enough to have written. But sometimes the process of writing feels like a burden I’m eager to shed. Not so, The Books That Mattered. It’s a book I had been thinking about for a while, and when I finally sat down to write it, I surrounded myself with a group of old friends – namely, my favorite books from more than fifty years as a reader.
Reading them again, I realized that I react to them now on at least three levels. The first and most obvious consisted of the flood of memories about first encounters with Huckleberry Finn or Atticus Finch, Anne Frank, Tom Joad, or Willie Stark. I remembered the emotional impact these characters had made, and I understood again why they continued to resonate over time. Then came a rush of appreciation for the writing styles, the great gifts of language, offered to us by Richard Wright or Lillian Smith, or later, Rick Bragg and Pat Conroy.
And finally, as the project began to take on a shape, I found myself caught in the historical context, the literary back-stories that fueled my encounters with Slaughterhouse Five or The Fire Next Time. All of these were powerful reminders of how our favorite books can take us to places that, in many cases, even our imaginations have never been. As a boy of ten reading Johnny Tremain I could travel in time to revolutionary Boston, breathing salt air in the Boston Harbor as surely as if I were walking those wharves. I remember talking about this with Sena Jeter Naslund, author of the contemporary classic, Ahab’s Wife, and she told me about a summer day in Birmingham when she was a girl, reading a passage from Laura Ingalls Wilder about a howling blizzard on the prairie.
“It was over ninety degrees,” Sena said, “but these words I was reading had made me shiver. I said to myself, ‘I’d like to be able to do that someday.’”
Such is the power of great writing. All of us, of course, have our own lists, our own shelves of favorite books that have enriched or even altered our lives. In writing about my own, I don’t mean to argue that these are the twenty-five or thirty best books ever written; they are simply the ones that have meant the most to me, and I found great pleasure and deep satisfaction in this opportunity to encounter them again. My hope is that the readers of The Books That Mattered will be moved to contagious ruminations of their own.
We’re gearing up for a big fall season, and to celebrate, we thought we’d offer some of our upcoming fall and backlist titles to readers on Goodreads.
(Side note: If you don’t have a Goodreads account, you are missing out, my friend! It’s a social media site dedicated to books and readers, so you can rate and review the books you read and watch your friends do the same. Just like Facebook or Twitter, it’s free! And the best part? There are tons of book giveaways going on every day.)
So please enjoy our latest Goodreads giveaways listed below. With any luck, you’ll take home an autographed copy of a backlist title or get a sneak peek at some of our fall titles that haven’t yet been released.
The pool is open, half of my coworkers are out of the office on holiday, and it’s hot enough to enjoy a glass or two of sweet iced tea (or perhaps something stronger) on the porch. So here are a few of our favorite books to read when you’re taking a break from the real world this summer. Enjoy!
“Remember your first John Grisham? Country music veteran Dill (he served as a personal manager for Minnie Pearl, Dwight Yoakam, and other greats) doesn’t miss a beat in this debut high-adrenaline thriller full of twists and turns.” —Library Journal, starred review
Judd Nix, a 23-year-old unpaid intern at Elite Management, welcomes the chance to become
the paid assistant of Simon Stills, one of country’s biggest managers, but he soon finds himself a witness to an assassination attempt. When a gunman takes aim at megastar Ripley Graham, Stills’s most important client and the last hope for the troubled recording industry, on stage at the Grand Ole Opry, the shooter misses and seriously wounds Stills instead. Nix and his co-worker, Megan Olsen, decide to investigate on their own, but with music executives plotting a major merger, they can’t be sure whom to trust.
Murder on Music Row leads readers through a maze of twists and turns that connect Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and London in a behind-the-scenes look at an industry where there are no limits in the pursuit of money, power, and fame.
God Bless America is a meditation on the American dream and its discontents. In his most ambitious collection yet, Steve Almond offers a comic and forlorn portrait of these United States: our lust for fame, our racial tensions, the toll of perpetual war, and the pursuit of romantic happiness.
Each of these 13 stories is an urgent investigation of America’s soul, its particular suffering, its injustices, its possibilities for redemption. With deft slight of hand, Almond, “a writer who knows us as well as we know ourselves” (Houston Chronicle), leavens his disappointment and outrage with a persistent hope for the men and women who inhabit his worlds. God Bless America offers us an astonishing vision of our collective fate, rendered in Almond’s signature style of “precise strokes… with metaphors so original and spot-on that they read like epiphanies” (San Francisco Chronicle).
Still not sold on this book? I’ve got two reasons more:
This isn’t your typical light read for the summer. This is a book of substance. It is a universal story of loss, grief, and human dignity.
Set amid the perils of illegal border crossings, The Iguana Tree is the suspenseful saga of Lilia and Hector, who separately make their way from Mexico into the United States, seeking work in the Carolinas and a home for their infant daughter.
Michel Stone’s harrowing novel meticulously examines the obstacles each faces in pursuing a new life: manipulation, rape, and murder in the perilous commerce of border crossings; betrayal by family and friends; exploitation by corrupt officials and rapacious landowners on the U.S. side; and, finally, the inexorable workings of the U.S. justice system.
Hector and Lilia meet Americans willing to help them with legal assistance and offers of responsible employment, but their illegal entry seems certain to prove their undoing. The consequences of their decisions are devastating.
If you’re looking for a book that humanizes the agony and elation of illegally entering the United States without politics, this is for you.
“Michel Stone’s first novel, The Iguana Tree, is an astonishing achievement, a daring but plausible leap into a world unnoted by most of us yet close around us daily. This story is at once a page-turner and a moving, psychologically genuine drama.”
—Rosa Shand, author of The Gravity of Sunlight, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year
“Part whimsical memoir, part cultural anthology, Hank Hung the Moon is a celebration of the music, the man, the era, the lore, and the magic of the South’s most beloved songster. If I were stranded on a desert island with only one book that captured everything I know and love about the South, this would be the one.”
—Cassandra King (Conroy), author of The Sunday Wife
The dark story of America’s Pulitzer Prize–winning hillbilly singer has been told often and well, but always with sad country fiddles wailing. This latest Hank Williams paean will make readers laugh as well as cry. Hank hung the moon and left his fans behind to admire it. He transformed the musical landscape, as well as the heavens, with his genius. And that’s a good thing.
More a musical memoir than a biography, Hank Hung the Moon is the author’s evocative personal stories of ’50s and ’60s musical staples—elementary-school rhythm bands, British Invasion rock concerts, and tearjerker movie musicals. It was a simpler time when Hank roamed the earth. The book celebrates a world of 78 rpm records and five-cent Cokes. Hank provides the soundtrack and wisdom for this Last Picture Show of a book.
A Cajun girl learns to understand English by listening to Hank on the radio. A Hank impersonator works by day at a prison but by night makes good use of his college degree in country music. Hank’s lost daughter, Jett, devotes her life to embracing the father she never knew. A newly minted recording artist buys a belt from Hank himself at a Nashville store that country’s first superstar bought to pacify a nagging wife.
Finally, here are stories readers haven’t heard a thousand times before about people—some famous, some not—who loved Hank. This lively little book uses Hank as a metaphor for life. Readers will tap their toes and demand an encore.
Newly hired deputy Marla Easton and Sheriff Dugan Walton are amazed at the performance of Dr. Sylvester Hopkins in a local 5K footrace. At age 65, Hopkins posts a world-class time of 17:35, two minutes faster than he has run in the past few years. Walton suspects Hopkins has concocted some new performance-enhancing drug.
A trail of bodies from Frisco to Nags Head, North Carolina, leads Deputy Easton and Sheriff Walton to the discovery of the Methuselah serum—a new drug designed by Hopkins that reverses aging in human cells. A nefarious triumvirate of pharmaceutical CEOs known as “the Medical Mafia” wants the formula at any price. So do the FBI and the president of the United States. But Sheriff Walton believes that he and Deputy Easton have been divinely chosen to guard the formula and serum, and they take their mission seriously—much like the angels posted in Eden to guard the Tree of Life. Their mission turns perilous when Deputy Easton’s seven-year-old son, Gabe, is kidnapped.
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Well, that’s all for today. Want to know what else we’re reading? Check our our staff picks on Pinterest. And share your favorite summer reads with us in the comments section.
When we found out that our author Judy Goldman — whose memoir Losing My Sister will be released in October — worked as a secretary and ad copywriter in New York City during the 1960s, we had to ask if she’d write a little guest blog for us as a celebration of Mad Men‘s upcoming series premier. (It’s this Sunday, March 25, at 9 p.m., for those of you living under a rock.) For anyone who can’t get enough martinis, cigarettes, skinny ties, and bouffant hairdos on the show, you have to read about the real thing. Enjoy!
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The Original Mad Men
By Judy Goldman
1965, post-college, post-teaching English in Atlanta for two years, I planned to move to NYC with a friend — a long journey from my childhood in Rock Hill, SC. Just before we were to leave, though, she called to say she’d decided to get married instead. Uncharacteristically, I went on alone — and landed at the Barbizon Hotel for Women, a very proper place that was also home to girls from Katherine Gibbs, the secretarial school where students wore white gloves to class. My room was so tiny I could lie in bed and open the door.
I wanted a glamour job, and got one — at Filmex, which made TV commercials. I was assistant to a production assistant. So it wasn’t so glamorous. At $70 a week, I could cash my paycheck on the bus.
When ad agency execs came to view their commercials, my job switched to bartender. I still remember the pamphlet I had to memorize — how to make a vodka gimlet. A Manhattan. Black Russian. I could tend bar and engage in small talk at the same time. Be friendly, honey! Me, in my sheath dress and three-inch heels, brown hair streaked with blonde.
Judy, in her sheath dress and three-inch heels, brown hair streaked with blonde, at the switchboard.
Every day at lunch, I relieved the switchboard operator. Once, a guy in the studio called: “Honey, we’re having trouble with the sound system. Would you count to ten over the loudspeaker?”
I went slow. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
From where I sat at the front desk, I could hear the crew laughing. What was so funny?
Another call. “Sweetheart, we’ve just about got it figured out. Count again.”
That’s when I figured it out. My slow, Southern syllables.
I didn’t stay at Filmex long. Who wanted to work at a place where the guys never learned your name? The ad agency people seemed more my type; I especially liked the copywriters. And, I’d always loved to write. Copywriting seemed the obvious next step. Of course, the route to any good job for a woman began in the secretarial pool.
Next, Ogilvy & Mather — secretary to copywriters. Then: junior copywriter at Benton & Bowles. Two of us were hired the same day. We were told that the head of the agency was betting on me to surface first; the VP was betting on the other gal. I envied her. The VP was better-looking.
One month in, the other gal left to get married. Not to the VP. He was already married. Which, at times, didn’t really seem to matter.
It was up to me. During the day, I wrote ads for Vick’s Cough Syrup. Evenings, all those office parties.
Just before I’d started at Benton & Bowles, I flew home to see my parents, and my sister fixed me up on a blind date. Home again for date #2. He drove his Volkswagen Beetle to New York — date #3. That’s when we got engaged.
Three months after the head of Benton & Bowles bet on me, I left to get married.
I didn’t know then what I know now. That the life I’d lived for two years would one day be a TV program.
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Judy Goldman is the author of two novels, Early Leaving and The Slow Way Back, and two books of poetry. Her new memoir, Losing My Sister, will be published in October 2012.
Her work has been published in Real Simple magazine, and in many literary journals—including Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Ohio Review, Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner—as well as in numerous anthologies. Her commentaries have aired on public radio and she teaches at writers’ conferences throughout the country. She received the Fortner Writer and Community Award for “outstanding generosity to other writers and the larger community.” She’s also the recipient of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Fiction, the Gerald Cable Poetry Prize, the Roanoke-Chowan Prize for Poetry, the Oscar Arnold Young Prize for Poetry, and the Zoe Kincaid Brockman Prize for Poetry. Judy lives with her husband in Charlotte, North Carolina.
John F. Blair, Publisher 