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Author Q & A with Karen Abbott

On December 15, 2019

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 15)

Award-winning New York Times bestselling author Karen Abbott adds to her popular lineup of historical nonfiction with The Ghosts of Eden Park– a surprising memoir of the life and times of George Remus, the 1920s teetotaling opportunist whose skyrocketing rise to “King of the Bootleggers” during Prohibition would end in tragedy.

An instant New York Times bestseller, Indie Next pick, Amazon best book of August, and a top fall title for both Newsweek and Publishers Weekly, the book is as important for its historical worth (many of the characters in this real-life saga have been practically wiped off the historical map of America’s past) as for its entertainment value.

Abbott’s work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications. Her previous books include Sin in the Second City, American Rose, and Liar Temptress Soldier Spy.

A native of Philadelphia, she now lives in New York.

Tell me how you first learned about George Remus’s true story, and why it caught your attention and inspired you to write Ghosts of Eden Park.

Karen Abbott

I usually get my ideas by perusing old archives and out-of-print books, but this one came through television–specifically the show “Boardwalk Empire,” which aired on HBO for five seasons. There was a minor character named George Remus. He spoke of himself in the third person and stole every scene he was in. I wondered if Remus was a real person, and indeed he was! His real story was much more dramatic than the show’s portrayal, with a sordid love triangle, a devastating betrayal, a murder, and a sensational trial.

The real Remus also spoke of himself in the third person: “This is going to be a hell of a Christmas for Remus”; “Remus has been betrayed by everyone he had trusted”; and my favorite: “Remus’s brain exploded.”

In all my years of researching history, I have never come across a more interesting, bizarre, and brazenly outlandish character. He was an impoverished, abused German immigrant kid who, through determination and savvy, became the most successful bootlegger in American history. Within a year of launching his operation, he owned 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States–an astonishing figure. Newspapers at the time compared him to Vanderbilt and Rockefeller.

At the height of Prohibition, Remus lived an “outrageous” lifestyle on many levels, using his background as both pharmacist and lawyer to game the system. Can you give us an example about Remus’s story that you would say proves the old saying that “truth is stranger than fiction?”

Remus is said to be a real-life inspiration for Jay Gatsby, mainly because of his lavish parties. The most famous was his 1921 New Year’s Eve party, when he unveiled his brand-new Greco-Roman bath, built for $175,000. At one end stood a variety of Turkish and Swedish needle baths, a style and pressure for every taste, and even electric baths–an early version of a tanning bed, heated by incandescent lights and said to make the user “frisky.” Remus’s glamorous wife, Imogene, put on a daring one-piece and executed a perfect dive. Remus handed out party favors: diamond stickpins and watches for the men, 1922 cars for the women, and a $1,000 bill tucked under everyone’s plate. In a gesture emblematic of the times, one what would be remembered in awe decades later, Remus lit guests’ cigars with $100 bills. All this in an era when the average annual salary was about $1,200.

Mabel Walker Willebrandt has been called “the most powerful woman in the country” at the time when she became the assistant attorney general of the United States in 1921 and took on the challenging task of enforcing the National Prohibition Act, which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Tell us about her role in this story.

When President Warren Harding appointed Willebrandt to be the assistant attorney general of the United States, she, along with all other adult female citizens, had only had the right to vote for nine months. She was 32 years old, only five years out of law school, and had never prosecuted a single criminal case–and yet suddenly she was in charge of the thousands of Prohibition cases that began piling up in the courts, including cases against Remus.

To add to the pressure of her job, she had a serious hearing problem, and spent an hour every morning styling her hair to conceal her hearing aids. She was almost inhumanly tough and thick-skinned, qualities that were reinforced by the ice-cold bath she took every morning. Her favorite saying was: “Life has few petted darlings”–and she didn’t consider herself one of them. Her formative childhood event: She once bit a pet cat’s ear. To teach her a lesson, her father bit her ear back. During her time, she was the most powerful and the most famous woman in the country, and I couldn’t believe she’d be so lost to history.

Your astounding research for this book made it possible for you to complete it with “no invented dialogue,” thanks to government files, archives, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, books and hearing and trial transcripts, as you listed in your Author’s Note. Tell me about this extraordinary investigation and why this level of accuracy of detail was so important to you.

A confession: I have never had so much fun researching a book. When I discovered that the Yale University Law Library possessed a 5,500-page trial transcript, I immediately set out for New Haven. Nearly every page was a treasure trove–all of the details I would need to recreate conversations and craft scenes. I found incredibly intimate details about Remus. For example, he didn’t like to wear underwear, which in the 1920s was considered evidence of an unsound mind. It took me four months to go through the trial transcript and compose an outline, which amounted to 85,000 words–nearly as long as the finished book itself.

George Remus’s wife, Imogene, fell in love with Franklin Dodge, the very Prohibition agent who put her husband in jail. Who was Imogene, and was she truly in love with Agent Dodge?

Imogene Remus was a classic villain: greedy, conniving, duplicitous–qualities for which she was roundly denigrated and punished. As awful as she was, a man who’d engaged in similar misdeeds likely would have gotten away with them. I think she was aware of this double standard and that it fueled her rebellion. She was the epitome of what the New York Times called the “middle-aged flapper,” defined as one who yearns to escape from a monotonous routine and seeks independent adventures.

When Imogene met Remus, she was going through a nasty divorce, supporting herself and her young daughter by working as a “dust girl” in Remus’s law office. She’d had a difficult life, and here was this brilliant, doting man who was poised to make millions as a bootlegger.

She was full partners with Remus before she turned on him, and she used all that knowledge to fortify her relationship with Dodge. Trial witnesses testified about Imogene and Dodge’s flirtatious phone calls, about their afternoon rendezvous in speakeasys, and about their plans to hire a hitman to kill Remus.

I don’t know if Imogene and Dodge were truly in love, but they definitely shared a common goal: to steal Remus’s fortune and ruin his life.

Lemuria has selected The Ghosts of Eden Park its August 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Quintessential book reveals making of Johnny Cash’s most iconic album

By Guest Author

On December 12, 2019

In Music

By DeMatt Harkins. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 17)

The morning of January 13th, 1968, Johnny Cash rode half an hour from Sacramento to the granite walls of Folsom State Prison. With Carl Perkins and The Statler Brothers as openers, he played two shows at 9:40am and 12:40pm. The composite recording of the proceedings would surpass 3 million units sold.

This was not Cash’s first performance at a prison, nor was it his initial appearance at that particular location. But in Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece, Michael Streissguth details what proved to be the most important day of Cash’s career, providing the trajectory to cement his place in musical history.

If you came up during a time when Cash was already a living legend, it is natural to assume he always was one. However, Streissguth explains this was not the case. At Folsom Prison‘s namesake track was recorded at Sun Studios 13 years prior. With the exception of one outlier, Cash’s string of hits tapered off around 1963. His output became increasingly uneven and uninspired. This came as no surprise with recording sessions regularly pilfered, when not missed entirely.

Streissguth lays this rut at the feet of Cash’s drug addiction. Throughout the decade, the singer would struggle with the misuse of amphetamines. Meeting concert obligations became a 50/50 prospect. When he did make it to the microphone, it was not unusual for Cash to be deep in the throes of his habit or just returning to consciousness.

However, as the 60s drew to a close, Streissguth demonstrates two people came into Cash’s life, to great benefit. They would help set the stage for the success of At Folsom Prison. Country royalty June Carter served as a calming, supportive, and loving influence on the troubled soul. Her budding relationship with Cash spawned not only a marriage, but also a return to form in the Grammy-winning duet “Jackson.”

Simultaneously, when Columbia Records transferred Bob Johnston to run their Nashville operations, it would open doors for Cash. Although the Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel producer had been stationed in New York, the native Texan proved a Cash ally, with an equal penchant for mischief. Cash had been asking to record at a prison for years. Johnston was just the guy to ignore the home office’s warnings and green light such a project. The gamble would pay off for all parties involved.

Just as At Folsom Prison would provide Cash’s career a shot in the arm, it also rehydrated country music from its own drought of sorts. In 1968, the musical order of the day was psychedelic and soul. Streissguth argues that Cash was miscategorized as country front the get-go, since he truly played rockabilly. He contends the popularity of Folsom greased the wheels for an updated country/rock hybrid introduced by The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. Going further, Streissguth credits Cash’s revival and subsequent exponential growth for paving the way to arena success for Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, among others.

Nonetheless, Streissguth asks the question, why is At Folsom Prison rarely if ever included in the best albums of the rebellious 60s? While LPs still considered masterpieces today explored new artistic landscapes, he asserts none of them truly challenged authority like At Folsom Prison. Mocking guards and swearing in front of a thousand inmates as tape rolled was a bold move for the era.

Recognizing this, Columbia built their marketing strategy on Cash’s impudence. At the time, the company allocated their promotional budget to pop and classical. With limited resources and a seemingly countercultural message, Columbia sent the record straight to underground newspapers and free-form radio DJs. Although now considered a landmark country album, At Folsom Prison initially gained momentum with the hip set.

But as Streissguth points out, Cash went beyond merely thumbing his nose. Over the next decade he would become an outspoken advocate for prison reform. Essentially unheard of at the time, he understood that caring for prisoners would achieve more for society than brutality. For years he spoke out during interviews, and even appeared at a Senate hearing in 1972.

Without question, At Folsom Prison put Johnny Cash back on the map for three more decades. In addition to putting you there that chilly morning in 1968, Streissguth places the album in context of Cash’s career, personal life, and music as a whole.

DeMatt Harkins of Jackson enjoys flipping pancakes and records with his wife and daughter.

Author Q & A with Jonathan Miles about Larry Brown

By Guest Author

On December 8, 2019

In Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 8)

Fans of the late Oxford author Larry Brown need wait no longer to own a collection of his career short works in one volume, with the release of Algonquin’s Tiny Love: The Complete Stories of Larry Brown.

It was fitting that writer Jonathan Miles, (author of the novels Anatomy of a Miracle, Want Not, and Dear American Airlines, and who considered Brown to be both close friend and mentor since they met in Oxford in the early ‘90s) would be the one to contribute the foreword to the book.

“Larry published six novels, a memoir, a book of essays, and all the stories (in this new book), carving his name, indelibly, onto the thick tree trunk of American literature,” Miles states in the foreword. “He strained and he faltered, yes, but he never lost his faith.”

Larry Brown

Without any training in writing or previous publication of a single piece, Brown literally taught himself to write–and he persevered through seven years of rejections until the publication of his first collection of short stories, Facing the Music, in 1988. After his first novel, Dirty Work, was published, he would quit his job as a firefighter in Oxford to devote his efforts full-time to writing.

Among other recognitions, Brown would go on to win the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction, the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the Southern Book Award for Fiction–twice.

He died of an apparent heart attack at his home near Oxford in 2004.

Miles, a former columnist for the New York Times, served as a contributing editor to several national magazines, and his journalistic work appeared in the annual Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime writing anthologies. A former longtime resident of Oxford, he now lives in rural New Jersey.

Miles shares his thoughts and memories about his friendship with Brown below.

How did the idea come about to publish all of Larry Brown’s work in one volume, and how were you chosen to write the foreword to this book?

The idea had been bouncing around, among Larry’s family and friends, for the last decade or more. The links between his two story collections – Facing the Music in 1988 and Big Bad Love in 1990–are so strong that combining them felt like a natural and graceful merger. The greater desire, however, was to finally corral all the stray stories that Larry published in magazines and anthologies, so as to gather the entirety of his short fiction into one definitive volume. Those includes his wild masterpiece, “A Roadside Resurrection,” which appeared in the Paris Review, as well as “Tiny Love,” the prickly, lovelorn title story, which Larry published in a charity anthology, as well as the early stories he published in biker and horror magazines. I’d been shepherding the idea along, over the years, and was honored when Algonquin, Larry’s longtime publisher, asked me to write the foreword.

Tell me about your friendship with Brown. How did you meet him, and what did you learn from him as a writer?

Jonathan Miles

I met Larry in 1992, a very memorable meeting that I wrote about in the foreword. It involves dancing on a table! Despite a 21-year age difference, we were instant pals. The Brown family adopted me, in just about every way, and neither Larry’s passing nor my move up north ever changed that–when I’m with them, I’m home.

As for writing, I’ve often said that my writing classroom was Larry’s pickup, and my classes were the hours Larry and I spent riding Lafayette County backroads. He often traced the origins of stories and scenes on those drives, pointing out the location of some real-life event and then explaining how he’d worked it into fiction, how he’d transformed it into art. Sharing the recipe with me, in a sense.

But the greatest lesson Larry gave me, and gave every artist, was the example of his persistence. Despite years of rejection, he never stopped writing. The only failure in art, he taught me, is not making art. You must always keep working.

Please describe Brown’s work in your own words. What do you admire about his work, and what drew you to it?

Larry Brown wrote about human frailties, about people in dire straits–emotional, romantic, financial, existential. The setting was almost always the rougher corners of north Mississippi, but the frailties were universal. Good people doing bad things, bad people doing good things. With limitless compassion, Larry sought to reconcile such human mysteries. From the first page he liked to load his characters with trouble–he called this “sandbagging”–and then chronicle their struggles to cast off this load, like the Old Testament’s God lobbing ordeals at Job. Yet by gauging what they could endure Larry showed what all of us can endure. There was a lot of darkness in Larry’s work but tremendous light, too.

Why was it important to finally publish all of Brown’s short work into one volume?

The hope is that this big new volume will draw a new generation to Larry Brown’s work and will reboot appreciation for one of the most singular voices in American literature. The people Larry wrote about don’t often appear in literary fiction, or, when they do, are rarely afforded the breadth of humanity that Larry gave them, the full bandwidth of their existence.

A young novelist from Alabama recently wrote me to say that he’d never met folks like himself and his family in books until reading his first Larry Brown book. Tim McGraw, a huge Larry fan, once told me that, unlike with most books he reads, he “recognized” the people in Larry’s work.

I hope this volume kindles more moments like that. I hope it leads more readers into Larry Brown’s north Mississippi, down those windy backroads. And I hope it helps to further cement his legacy as one of this state’s–and for that matter this nation’s–greatest writers.

What are some of your favorites among Larry’s work, and why?

In putting this collection together, I was struck, anew, by his story “Samaritans,” which appeared in Facing the Music. The setup for the story sounds like a joke setup: a little kid walks into a bar. But the story veers into dark, unsettling directions, and ultimately just claws at your heart. I’ve probably read it dozens of times but each time I do it feels slightly different–tonally, morally, the works. Certain paintings are like that; there’s always something new to see. Likewise, certain songs. That’s a hallmark of great art: it feels inexhaustibly alive.

Copies of Tiny Love: The Complete Stories of Larry Brown and Lemuria’s specially designed Larry Brown t-shirts (designed by Barry Gifford) are available in our online store and at our location in Banner Hall.

‘The Cofield Collection,’ now back in print, is a striking Faulkner portrait

By Guest Author

On December 3, 2019

In Art/Photography, Southern Fiction

By Allen Boyer. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 1)

“It wasn’t easy to get a smiling photograph of William Faulkner!” That was the fond, exasperated comment of J.R. “Colonel” Cofield, the Oxford photographer in whose studio Faulkner sat for the portraits that graced the dust jackets of his novels.

Dealing with William Faulkner was daunting. Yet Cofield endured and ultimately, he prevailed. He seldom saw Faulkner smile, but he captured striking images of the man. Those portraits, with other photos taken or collected by the Cofield family, supply the heart of William Faulkner: The Cofield Collection–published in 1978, now brought back to print.

Cofield first photographed Faulkner when he published Sanctuary, in 1931. Faulkner was thirty-three, a handsome young author with a tweed jacket and a cigarette. Late in life, when pressed by friends in Virginia, he posed in a fox-hunting outfit, with top hat and riding boots and blazing red huntsman’s coat. Other times he was indifferent; he would sit for Cofield wearing a three-piece suit or a simple blue work shirt.

As well as Faulkner, this book covers the postage-stamp of native soil about which he wrote. Field hands work mules, and farmers sell produce from trucks parked on the Oxford Square. Cotton wagons crowd the lot outside the gin. Barnstormers pose beside grass airstrips. Schoolchildren line up, some outside the Oxford Graded School, others on muddy lawns out in the county. A string band warms up the crowd for a speech by youthful Senate candidate John Stennis.

Some pictures have the glossy look of publicity shots. Years after he had won the Nobel Prize for literature, Faulkner posed at a Memphis preview of Land of the Pharaohs. He had a screenwriter’s credit on the picture, and it was a film by Howard Hawks, the director who took Faulkner dove-hunting with Clark Gable. Faulkner’s own favorite photo looks like something from Hollywood, a studio close-up straight out of film noir.

Faulkner summoned Colonel Cofield to Rowan Oak to record his celebrated costume-party hunt breakfast, that Sunday morning in May 1938. He called him back for two weddings, his daughter’s and his niece’s, and at those receptions Cofield caught him smiling.

Some of Faulkner’s past is dead–very clearly past. There are images here from Life Magazine and the Memphis Press-Scimitar. As a teenager, Faulkner often rode the train to Taylor and hiked back along Old Taylor Road, then a red-dirt track, now choked with the cars of Ole Miss student traffic. Black men and women appear on the edges of their white employers’ family portraits. (John Cofield, grandson of Colonel Cofield, whose internet collections preserve his hometown’s history, energetically documents the past of both black and white communities. Forty years ago, this was harder.)

In Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the Sartoris family seems modeled on Faulkner’s own relations. But, ironically, there is much of the novelist in a different character, strong-willed black tenant farmer Lucas Beauchamp. Beauchamp is a match for Faulkner in independence and a subdued haughty knightliness, a taciturnity shaped by battles with misfortune. Beauchamp’s face, Faulkner wrote, “was not sober and not grave but wore no expression at all.” Can the same distant unreadable expression be seen in these pages? For in nearly every photograph, studio portrait or snapshot alike, Faulkner’s gaze is similar–serious, reserved, never quite directly into the camera. Cofield knew that expression well. Quoting Kipling, he wrote: “‘No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.’ Bill Faulkner lived up to this principle to a T.”

Some of these images will be familiar. It was this book that made them well-known. Eudora Welty praised the original edition of “The Cofield Collection.” “These photographs,” she wrote, “eloquently tell us what no voice now can tell, what no words are likely to express so clearly and intimately about William Faulkner’s life.” Miss Welty was no mean photographer herself, and her judgment still holds true.

Allen Boyer lives and writes on Staten Island. He grew up in Oxford, where Colonel Cofield took the Boyer family’s portraits every year.

Lawrence Wells, the editor of The Cofield Collection, will be at Lemuria on Saturday, December 7, from 1:00 to 2:00 to sign copies.

Author Q & A with Phil Keith

By Guest Author

On December 1, 2019

In Adventure, African-American, Biography/Memoir, War

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (December 1)

Author Phil Keith adds his sixth book to his collection as his collaboration with bestselling writer Tom Clavin unfolds the almost unbelievable story of bravery and valor of a little-known World War I hero in All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard–Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy.

Bullard was the first African American military pilot who flew in combat, and the only one to serve as a pilot in World War I. He would later become a jazz musician, a night club owner in Paris, and a spy during the French Resistance.

Among Keith’s previous volumes is Blackhorse Riders, winner of the 2012 award from USA Book News for Best Military Non-Fiction. He was also a finalist for the 2013 Colby Award, and earned a silver medal from the Military Writers Society of America that same year.

He holds a degree in history from Harvard University, and is a former Navy aviator. During three tours in Vietnam, he was awarded the Purple Heart, Air Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, and the Navy Commendation Medal, among other honors.

Your book states that Eugene Bullard led a “legendary life” as a boxer, pilot, highly decorated soldier, and a spy. Why has his story been so little known?

Phil Keith

Three reasons, primarily: Gene fought for France in World War I, and, of course, he was black. Not many in America, during World War I, were interested in hearing stories about courageous African Americans. The times were still too racially charged, and even the American Air Service had an official policy that banned blacks from serving.

Secondly, all during his World War I experiences, he was constantly badgered and put down by a particularly racist American living in Paris, Dr. Edmund Gros. This doctor was the founder of the famed American Ambulance Service and co-founder of what became the Lafayette Flying Corps. He was a virulent hater of blacks, and of Gene in particular, because Bullard had been so successful despite Gros’ best efforts to ground him. Gros constantly omitted his name from recognition of Americans helping in the war effort and eventually was successful in getting Gene bounced out of French aviation.

Thirdly, when Gene returned to America, he wrote his autobiography in the late 1950s. That was at a time when Franco-American relations were at a low ebb; and, the editors who reviewed his manuscript thought it was too fantastical to be true, especially for a barely educated black man.

How did you hear about Bullard, and how did you handle the research for this book, working with information that was not only hard to find, but often conflicting?

Doing research for a book on World War I, with a chapter on America’s famous aviators, I came across a footnote in some Eddie Rickenbacker material that mentioned Bullard. That was the first I had ever heard of him. I was fascinated and began to dig.

I found the only existing archive on Bullard at Columbus State University in his hometown of Columbus, Ga. I spent a week combing through their boxes. We also found bits and pieces of the Bullard story in other bios, particularly his famous contemporaries.

And, yes, there were conflicting stories, so we had to set up a rigorous process of “triangulation:” Nothing got in the book unless it could be confirmed by at least two other sources.

Despite the obstacles, why did you and your co-author Tom Clavin believe Bullard’s story needed to be told?

Bullard is clearly one of the most fascinating historical figures of the 20th century yet very few people know about him; so, from that standpoint alone, his story is important–fills in a missing piece. Perhaps even more importantly, Bullard’s story should be a role model for today’s African American young men and women. He is a true hero who can be looked up to and his examples of determination and persistence are crucial, we think, to the telling of the experiences of post-slavery blacks in America and Europe.

How did you two split up the writing of this book?

Tom is a dogged researcher, so he got the task of “story-hound,” except for the sojourn to Georgia. Much of the original sleuthing went to Tom. We also wrote to our individual strengths: I concentrated on the military aspects of Gene’s life, for example, and Tom, who has written several sports books, did the work on Gene’s boxing days. I did most of the rough draft manuscript, and Tom did the vast majority of the editing and smoothing. I had never done a collaboration before, but Tom has. I have to say it went very smoothly. It was so smooth, in fact, that our editor at Hanover Square Press immediately optioned our next book idea, which is in progress now. It will be a ripping good sea story about the Civil War’s most famous sea battle between the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama.

Please share the story of how the title of this book was chosen.

“All Blood Runs Red” is the Anglicized version of the French “Tous Sange Que Coule C’est Rouge.” This was the motto Bullard had stenciled on the sides of his SPAD fighter plane, with the words surrounding a large red heart with a dagger stuck in it. For Bullard, he wanted to make the point that “we’re all in this (the war) together.” It did not matter the color of any man’s skin: when any soldier bled, all the blood was red. This was also the title of his never published autobiography (1960) and we wanted to use it in his honor.

Phil Keith will at Lemuria on Tuesday, December 3, at 5:00 p.m. to sign copies of and discuss All Blood Runs Red. Lemuria has selected All Blood Runs Red its December 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Sarah Broom’s award-winning memoir ‘The Yellow House’ demonstrates the powerful pull of home

By Guest Author

On November 27, 2019

In African-American, Biography/Memoir, New Orleans

By Emily Gatlin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 24)

Childhood homes are harbors of our rearing, keepers of our secrets and reflections of our parents. It’s our first understanding of what “home” actually means, and the way it always pulls us back.

Memories made there supersede the physical house itself. We don’t remember the stains on our bedroom carpet, but we know that our feet were warm when we rolled out of bed to get ready for school. The walls were filled with tokens of what we loved, be it a watercolor painting or old family portraits. We don’t remember what the upholstery looked like on the formal dining room chairs, just that on holidays, we gathered as a family and laughed along with stories of our shared history. Often, our parents upsized, downsized, separated, became snowbirds or passed on, but we can still drive by our homes and be filled with warmth and gratitude.

Sarah M. Broom’s memoir The Yellow House takes us on a journey of her life through her New Orleans East home, which was purchased by her mother Ivory Mae in 1961. As a young mother and widow, Ivory Mae invested her entire life savings at nineteen years old to purchase the shotgun house, in what was a promising up-and-coming area of New Orleans, and home to a major NASA plant during the height of the space boom.

Ivory Mae was optimistic about her investment and when she married her second husband Simon Broom, Sarah’s father, they forged their family together through constant home renovations and family additions—twelve children in all—until Simon died when Sarah was only six months old. Ivory Mae’s thirteenth child, the half-finished yellow house, was left in mild disrepair after Simon’s death, but it didn’t really matter. The family held together tightly, and sent each of the twelve children out into the world to find their own way.

Broom left the crumbling home and New Orleans after graduating from high school, but found herself continuously drawn back to the yellow house after career shifts and general twenty-something malaise until ultimately, it was destroyed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She decided to come back to do what she could for her beloved city and other residents in her former neighborhood, becoming a frustrated speechwriter for embattled Mayor Ray Nagin, while getting to know a different side of New Orleans. She did not win many friends that go around.

Recently winning the the National Book Award for nonfiction, The Yellow House is a love letter to Broom’s family, while at the same time a reckoning of politics, race, and class in New Orleans as it deals with the disparity between New Orleans East, which was all but wiped off the map by Katrina, and the more luscious and populated tourist centers of the city.

Broom’s writing is masterful and unflinching, cuts deep to the bone, while being affable and full of love for her native city. She conjures the spirit of New Orleans in a way that only someone who came from its soil can, shining a light on its lesser-known, but always visible residents. They are the ones who fled to the Superdome, cut themselves out of their attics, and remained in New Orleans to try and reclaim their lives any way they could.

While heartbreaking at times, The Yellow House is a necessary read in the fact that it’s a unique firsthand, well-researched exploration of inequality, the American experience, place and identity, and a true definition of family. Broom proves once and for all that you really can go home again.

Emily Gatlin is the Digital Editor of WONDERLUST and the author of The Unknown Hendrix and 101 Greatest American Rock Songs and the Stories Behind Them. She lives in Oxford.

Lemuria selected The Yellow House as its September 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction. Signed first editions are available in our online store, and regular hardback editions are available in our physical store.

Author Q & A with William “Bill” Morris

By Guest Author

On November 24, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Music

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 24)

William H. (Bill) Morris would tell you that he has had more than his share of “magic moments’ in his lifetime, and he shares many details of his close-knit friendships with some of the greatest musicians of the R & B, Rock and Roll and Doo-Wop era of the ‘50s and ‘60s in his heartfelt memoir, This Magic Moment: My Journey of Faith, Friends, and the Father’s Love.

Growing up in Jackson during this period, Morris became especially fascinated with the popular melodies and harmonies of the doo-wop musicians–and though he would go on to establish a highly successful insurance firm, he never forgot his fondness for the music of that period.

William Morris

Through a series of providential circumstances, Morris would go on to befriend several of the most famous among those musical legends, including members of the Moonglows, the Drifters, and other groups. These deep lifelong relationships would see him offer aid and encouragement to musicians whose careers had waned, including at least one who found his health, finances, and hope declining.

Through it all, Morris steadfastly credits his strong faith in God for allowing him the opportunities to forge “enduring bonds that would last beyond their lifetimes,” creating examples to inspire others.

A lifelong resident of Jackson, Morris and his wife Camille have been married 47 years and their family includes two daughters and five grandchildren. He has also authored a coffee table book entitled Ole Miss at Oxford: A Part of Our Heart and Soul.

In the introduction of your book, This Magic Moment, you tell readers that you have always had “a deep and abiding bond with music”–one that led you to seriously consider music promotion as a career. Why did you decide to pursue a career in insurance instead?

My father knew college would be more valuable to me if I had “skin in the game,” as in paying for half of the cost myself. The way I was able to earn that money was by hosting and promoting dances around Jackson, which I loved doing. Fourteen of those dances were big successes. The one that wasn’t made me realize that music promotion was an unpredictable career and would not give the financial stability I wanted to support an eventual wife and family.

My father was a successful insurance executive who was devoted to the welfare of his clients, and they loved him for it. I decided to follow his path, which proved to be the right decision. I am proud and grateful for the success I have had with the firm, and as I discovered, it was possible for me to also pursue my passions for music, photography, and writing at the same time.

You grew up during a time when popular music changed from listening to Guy Lombardo on the radio to rock and roll and “doo-wop” songs on 45 rpm records. How did you come to form lasting relationships with singers who were among the most famous in the country during the 1950s and 1960s?

I fell in love with R&B/doo-wop from the first time I heard it in high school. The rich harmonies and the passionate delivery of the music was different from anything I had heard before. I began listening to WOKJ in Jackson, WLAC in Nashville, and WDIA in Memphis, which were some of the only stations accessible in the area that played the African American sounds of rhythm and blues and doo-wop. I would also go to Capital Music in downtown Jackson to sample the newest 45s. This touched my soul, and I could not get enough of it.

I was able to meet some of my musical heroes while promoting dances and later booking groups for my fraternity in college. However, the relationships were formed much later in life as a result of my friendship with Prentiss Barnes, the original bass singer of The Moonglows. He invited me to be his guest at major musical events that gave me the opportunity to meet and come to know a virtual who’s who of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and doo-wop musicians. It was my friendship with Prentiss that led to my long and dear friendship with Bill Pinkney of the Original Drifters and later Harvey Fuqua and Rufus McKay. I spoke and sang at all four of their funerals. They became like brothers to me.

You state that your book is “a love story of deep friendship, given from above.” How did your relationship with Prentiss Barnes begin, and how did it develop through the years?

The Moonglows were one of my favorite groups. While on a business trip to Washington D.C. in 1980, I attended a performance of The Moonglows. I took the opportunity to meet them during a break and before long we were singing some of their hits. Bobby Lester heard something in my voice that prompted him to insist I sing the lead on a song with them in the next set. I never considered myself to be a singer and had never had a mic in my hand. Although I was reluctant, singing with some of my musical heroes was one of the biggest thrills of my life. It also played a big role in my eventual relationship with Prentiss.

Almost exactly a year from this event, I picked up the Clarion-Ledger and saw the front-page story about Prentiss Barnes, who was now living in Jackson in complete despair. He was broken in every way–physically, financially, spiritually. The Holy Spirit made it clear to me that I was to reach out and help him. When I first tried, Prentiss was very unreceptive and skeptical until I told him about singing with The Moonglows in Washington.

We were able to help get him the help he needed, and our friendship grew over three decades to be one of the most important relationships of my life. He included me in all the big moments in his life–including The Moonglows’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Several years later he gave me his award, saying that it would have never happened if I had not come into his life. I cannot express how gratifying it was to see him go from someone with one foot in the grave who was hopeless to having him know that he was appreciated and loved by so many.

Would you briefly share some of the music-related highlights that are part of the journey you write about in your book?

Forming Hallelujah Productions and producing two gospel CDs with the Original Drifters in 1995.
Serving as chairman of a 2002 benefit at the Country Club of Jackson in honor of Prentiss Barnes and establishing a fund for musicians in need. Morgan Freeman was the honorary chairman.
Performing with The Moonglows at Boston Symphony Hall as part of their Doo Wop Hall of Fame induction in 2005.

Please tell me why you wrote this book, who should read it, and why you titled it This Magic Moment.

It is my intent to bless and inspire people. By acting on the urgings of the Holy Spirit, my life was enhanced beyond measure and in ways I could have never imagined. I hope people will be encouraged to trust and obey our Heavenly Father when he speaks to you.

The other important message I want to share is that people from different backgrounds, circumstances, political beliefs, etc. can find what they have in common and build meaningful relationships and all will be blessed. We all have far more in common than we have differences.

This Magic Moment is not only the name of one of the Drifters’ most famous songs, it is a metaphor for life. We have many “magic moments” in our lives that lead to other “magic moments” if we take the time to recognize them. Sometimes it is only when we look back that we realize how everything magically worked together.

William Morris will be at Lemuria on Friday, November 29, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. to sign copies of This Magic Moment.

Your Moment of Zen: Frank LaRue Owen’s ‘The Temple of Warm Harmony’

By Jamie

On November 18, 2019

In Poetry, Zen

“Afoot and light hearted, I take to the open road.” So begins Whitman’s long poem “Song of the Open Road,” a delightful, meandering meditation on what it means to be human. A theme that Whitman hammers into this poem, without a hint of subtlety, is the familiar “the journey is the destination,” a trope that has had countless iterations over time. Frank LaRue Owen’s new book, The Temple of Warm Harmony, follows in the same vein as Whitman, Homer, and Kerouac, yet he finds inspiration in the Eastern traditions of Zen and Pure Land Buddhism. It’s hard to classify which genre to place Temple: it could be shelved with poetry or with metaphysical studies or Zen meditation. But tacking The Temple of Warm Harmony down into a tidy category is antithetical to the book’s very purpose. Rather than telling us to be something, Owen’s poems invite us to simply be, whatever and wherever we are.

The book is arranged like a classical comedy. Poems at the beginning of the book show the speaker’s struggle with strife, loneliness, and feeling spiritually lost, having lost the tao, or the path, upon which he wishes to tread. In the end, though, we gain hope. “Sometimes the inner and outer/ move along like birds/ gliding in different directions,” Owen tells us in “Teaching of the Seasons.” Even though these “birds” of body and soul are moving in opposite directions, there is a peace to this split. They are “gliding,” unobstructed, to their various ends. Sometimes—often —the physical and spiritual are at opposing ends to each other, yet Owen doesn’t require that our currents be parallel for us to find contentment.

There are times when a reader’s defensiveness might make one look at Owen’s high-minded contentment as arrogance, but nothing could be farther from the truth. “Who is this guy, and why does he claim to have it all figured out,” one might ask. Well, he doesn’t know it all, and this is the source of the book’s wisdom. Part metaphysical self-help guide, part image-driven poetry, part Zen meditative koan collection, The Temple of Warm Harmony offers quiet in a time we desperately need it. When the barrage of news and tweets and noise (literal and otherwise) send us into an overwhelmed, bloated fatigue, Frank LaRue Owen offers us simplicity.

Frank LaRue Owen will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, November 20, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss The Temple of Warm Harmony. He will also be at Lemuria on Saturday, December 21, at 2:00 p.m. in a joint event with Beth Kander, author of Born in Syn.

Author Q & A with Lara Prescott

By Guest Author

On November 17, 2019

In Fiction, Historical Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (November 17)

Lara Prescott’s fictional account of three young women employed in the CIA’s typing pool who rise to the upper echelons of espionage during the 1950s Cold War is based on the true story of the agency’s undercover plan to smuggle copies of Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago into the USSR.

The Secrets We Kept, Prescott’s debut, has been released to much acclaim that included the possibility of movie rights.

The winner of the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for the first chapter of The Secrets We Kept, Prescott’s stories have been published in the Southern Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, Day One, and Tin House Flash Fridays.

Prescott received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin, and today she resides in Austin.

The Secrets We Kept is based on a true but probably little-known slice of Cold War history during the 1950s that saw the American CIA make a strategic push to have Russian author Boris Pasternak’s epic novel Doctor Zhivago published and made available to Soviet readers. The ploy not only resulted in the book’s publication in 1957, but to top it off, it was (much to the embarrassment of Russia’s Communist officials) granted the Nobel Prize for literature the following year. How did this event come to your attention, and what inspired you to base your debut novel on this feat?

Lara Prescott

I first learned about the Doctor Zhivago mission in 2014, after my father sent me a Washington Post article about newly declassified documents that shed light on the CIA’s Cold War-era “Books Program.” With my interest piqued, I devoured the incredible true story behind the publication of Doctor Zhivago. What I discovered was that the CIA had obtained the banned manuscript, covertly printed it, and smuggled it back into the USSR.

The first CIA memos on Doctor Zhivago described the book as “the most heretical literary work by a Soviet author since Stalin’s death,” saying it had “great propaganda value” for its “passive but piercing exposition of the effect of the Soviet system on the life of a sensitive, intelligent citizen.”

And it was seeing the actual memos and so many other declassified documents like them–with all their blacked-out and redacted names and details–that first inspired me to fill in the blanks with fiction.

Explain how art, music, and literature were considered so important to Soviet culture that they could be used to spread the idea of freedom among its citizens during this time.

During the Cold War, both the Soviets and Americans believed in the unmatched power of books. Joseph Stalin once described writers as, “the engineers of the human soul.” And in a 1961 secret report to the U.S. Senate, the CIA’s former chief of covert action described books as, “the most important weapon of strategic propaganda.”

Each side believed the longtail of cultural influence–how people could read a book, view a work of art, or listen to a piece of music and come away from the experience a changed person. In the case of Doctor Zhivago, the CIA wanted Soviet citizens to question why a masterpiece by one of their most famous living writers was kept from them.

Tell me about the main female characters and why they were so well suited for their roles as spies.

The characters of Sally and Irina are very much inspired by early female spies. Elizabeth “Betty” Peet McIntosh’s book Sisterhood of Spies first exposed me to a world of real-life heroines, including Virginia Hall, Julia Child–yes, that Julia Child–and Betty herself. These women got their start in the OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA, during World War II, and, after the war, some transitioned to the CIA, just as Sally does in the novel.

Today, we may have a woman as the head of the CIA, but, back then, most women–even those who had served their country so courageously–were relegated to secretary or clerk positions. The character of Irina is first hired for such a position, but quickly is utilized in the Agency as someone who picks up and delivers classified documents. These were jobs women were suited for, as they’d often go undetected as someone who could possibly be handling secret information.

Considering the different cultural and economic roles of women at the time of the book’s setting–when they were often held back from career success–you portray intelligent, hardworking women who genuinely enjoy their work and are good at it. At what stage was what we now call “feminism” in those days?

I believe the experiences of these hardworking and highly qualified women being held back from advancing in their careers were the seeds of modern-day feminism. During this time period, women were already beginning to question why they were being paid less money than their male counterpoints and why they were not given promotions. This sense of workplace inequality gradually developed into second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

Have you been surprised by the book’s acclaim to this point, beginning even before its publication, and with movie rights already in the works?

Absolutely! It has been an almost surreal experience. I feel so very grateful to have had the opportunity of such a large platform for people to discover and read my debut novel. The greatest joy comes from meeting readers who have been touched by the book in some way.

Lara Prescott will be at Lemuria on Thursday, November 21, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss The Secrets We Kept. Lemuria has chosen The Secrets We Kept as its December 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

The secret is out on ‘The Secrets We Kept’ by Lara Prescott

By Guest Author

On November 12, 2019

In Fiction, Historical Fiction

By Valerie Walley. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (September 29)

The Secrets We Kept is a debut novel by Lara Prescott based on the true events surrounding the 1957 publication of Dr. Zhivago, a 20th century literary masterpiece combining a sweeping love story with intrigue, political hardship, and tragedy, set between the Russian Revolution and WWII. One of the greatest love stories ever written, it was made into the haunting film featuring Julie Christie and Omar Sharif. Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for it, which he was made to turn down by an embarrassed and outraged KGB. It was banned reading there until 1988. But if you haven’t read it, now you’re up to speed, and you can read The Secrets We Kept!

Set in 1957, The Secrets We Kept tells of the CIA’s mission to weaponize a work of art by using this publication against Russia behind the Iron Curtain. The novel is set against the backdrop of the decades long love story between author Boris Pasternak and his muse, Olga (the inspiration for Lara), who spent years in and out of Russian prisons. The stuff of her own life and her relationship with Boris could be a novel in itself. The novel alternates between this story and the stories of two contemporary, unconventional, and mold-breaking women ahead of their time. Sally and Irina are seduced and spurned by the CIA’s typing pool, eventually becoming spies themselves. Their stories, along with a chorus from their co-workers–in some cases first generation college graduates, speakers of multiple languages, and pilots–have now been relegated to the CIA typing pool once the men have returned from WWII. These are the voices telling the story of bringing Dr. Zhivago into print by smuggling it back into Russia. These three women–Olga, Irina, and Sally–do change the course of history through the secrets they keep.

In settings from the Russian countryside, and Pasternak’s own dacha, and on to 50’s Milan and Paris, and grounded back into the reality of an era in which women were trying to find a meaningful workplace in male dominated postwar fifties DC, this is an unputdownable, stylishly plotted and told novel for all.

I urge you to pick up The Secrets We Kept and be swept away into Russia and intrigued by the thrilling story of spy craft. Ultimately, though, it will be each woman’s story that will haunt you for a long time. And while you don’t have to have read or watched Dr. Zhivago, you will probably want to.
Fun fact–Lara Prescott is named after Boris Pasternak’s heroine and as a child often listened to “Lara’s Theme” played by her mother’s jewelry box. You’ll be able to find out more about her obsession with all things Russian, and Dr. Zhivago in particular, when she’s here for a reading at Lemuria on November 21.

This bold and unconventional historical thriller is already a runaway bestseller. Perfect for book clubs, it was also chosen by Reese Witherspoon‘s Hello Sunshine book club.

And along the way you’ll find out how a piece of art changed the world and the course of history in so much a lovelier, more meaningful way than anything social media will ever be able to do.

Valerie Walley is a Ridgeland resident.

Page 3 of 257

Author Q & A with Karen Abbott

Quintessential book reveals making of Johnny Cash’s most iconic album

Author Q & A with Jonathan Miles about Larry Brown

‘The Cofield Collection,’ now back in print, is a striking Faulkner portrait

Author Q & A with Phil Keith

Sarah Broom’s award-winning memoir ‘The Yellow House’ demonstrates the powerful pull of home

Author Q & A with William “Bill” Morris

Your Moment of Zen: Frank LaRue Owen’s ‘The Temple of Warm Harmony’

Author Q & A with Lara Prescott

The secret is out on ‘The Secrets We Kept’ by Lara Prescott

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