Mississippi Book Festival 2019 – Page 4

Tag: Mississippi Book Festival 2019 (Page 4 of 7)

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 31)

What if Elvis Presley’s death didn’t occur as thought at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977?

What if he was murdered by a rogue government agency? Or his death was faked and he’s still alive?

In a fast-paced page-turner, Philip Shirley weaves a tale of intrigue and nation-jumping that renews the debate over Elvis in the mystery novel The Graceland Conspiracy.

Shirley addresses questions and conspiracy theories that arose after the “death,” including: Why did the medical examiner’s report say Elvis was 170 pounds when there was ample film footage at the time showing him at well over 200 pounds?

“There was no shortage of theories about how Elvis might have died, or why, or who might have wanted him dead,” Shirley writes. One said flat-out that Elvis was part of a three-year undercover operation and the mob was out to get him before he could testify. “The only thing that was clear was that Elvis’ death created more conspiracy ideas than President Kennedy’s assassination.”

In Graceland, Shirley chooses the time for his novel as the lip of the millennium, in the final days of the Clinton administration, and before 9/11 in Birmingham. His protagonist, Matthew Boykin, 27, is drawn home there from a wasted life as a biker and pool hall denizen in Texas after his father dies in an unexplained car crash.

As his father is dying in the hospital, Boykin finds that he was perhaps not an “accountant” with a seemingly marginal Department of Justice branch called the National Security Enforcement Office (NSEO) years before an early retirement after Elvis’ “death.”

Boykin had left home seven years before as his father succumbed to alcoholism, raging at the world, and spending his days before a TV set with a bottle of whiskey by his chair. He only came home because a shadowy figure tracked him down in a bar and told him that his mother needed him.

Turns out, shortly before the car cash, his father had sobered up after years of trying to drown his remorse and shame over an event he witnessed that he would not name and was trying to make amends for it.

In a thriller that never slows its pace, Boykin vows to find the reason for his father’s death, the act that caused his spiraling into alcoholism, and to seek revenge in a saga that extends to Europe amid a trail of bodies. Along the way, he mends the wounds in his own life, finds love, and creates lasting friendships—ultimately, solving the mystery of Elvis’ “death.”

This is the sixth book for Shirley, who splits his time between Dauphin Island, Ala., and the Madison area, including two novels and a collection of short stories.

It’s a great read that’s sure to resurrect the Elvis debate anew.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Philip Shirley will be at Lemuria on Monday, April 1, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and read from The Graceland Conspiracy.

Author Q & A with Tom Clavin

By Guest Author

On March 24, 2019

In History, Western

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

Among those worthy of celebrity status in mid-19th century America were rugged gunslingers whose reputations were often built on myths and legends borne of truth and tragedy–and one who reached the heights of notoriety was Wild Bill Hickock.

New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin adds to his collection of historical nonfiction with Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter, examining in detail the life and rowdy times of this iconic American figure.

Notoriety gained from the press made Hickock a nationally known figure, and thus, placed a target on his back for hotshots who wanted to make a name for themselves as the man who would take him down.

A quick-draw artist who was known for his accuracy and courage when it came to gunfights, Hickock became a lawman at 20, and wen ton to hold the titles of Army scout, federal marshal, and Union spy. It would be a bullet that would end his life at age 39.

Clavin has served as a newspaper and web editor, magazine writer, TV/radio commentator and reporter for the New York Times. Among his career credits are awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, an dthe National Newspaper Association. His book include Dodge City, The Heart of Everything That Is, and Valley Forge. Clavin lives in Sag Harbor, New York.

“Wild Bill” Hickock, hom you describe as the “first post-Civil War celebrity of the West,” was well-known as America’s first gunfighter during the 1800s–but his real name wasn’t even Bill. Tell us how James Butler Hickock became popularly known as “Bill”–and how he earned the legendary title of “Wild.”

Tom Clavin

Two separate events resulted in “Wild Bill.” The first and less dramatic is he had a brother who called himself Bill–his real name was Lorenzo–and probably as a joke when traveling together on a steamship on the Missouri River they called each other Bill. Lorenzo disembarked, “Jim” Hickock pushed on, and passengers called him Bill, and he got comfortable about this.

The “Wild” part happened after he entered a saloon fight on the side of a bartender outnumbered 6-to-1, and onlookers thought that was a wildly gutsy thing to do. From 1861 on, he was Wild Bill Hickock.

Why do say in your Author’s Note that it was a “gullible and impressionable public” that made Wild Bill bigger than all of the legendary frontier figures (like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson) who came before him?

There had always been a hunger back East for tall tales about frontier figures, bu the public became especially ravenous after the Civil War when the American frontier exploded with seemingly limitless potential. Hickock cut a romantic, larger-than-life figure and had a distinctive look and there was a bigger than ever number of readers. All this combined to almost overnight elevating him to superstar status.

It was a Harper’s New Monthly Magazine article in February 1867 that first spread Hickock’s name and legend across the nation, making him nationally famous at age 29. What effect did that article have on Hickock’s life?

The article made him very famous. He could not have been prepared for that, but he sort of took his fame in stride. Hickock did not seek attention, but he didn’t hide from it, either. He was mostly a modest man, but a part of him enjoyed being almost a mythical figure. The downside was much of his fame was as a best-in-the-West gunfighter, making him a target for those younger and possibly faster who wanted to take that title. For the rest of his life, he had to wonder which bullet had his name on it.

Briefly, for what exploits was Wild Bill best known?

Though we don’t have a lot of details, his years as a spy behind Confederate lines were full of exciting exploits. Obviously, being a gunfighter who could shoot faster and more accurately than any man he encountered. And especially when marshal of Abilene in Kansas, Hickock became the prototype of the two-fisted and two-gun frontier lawman. And he was the most well-known of Western plainsmen.

“Wild Bill,” was described as “the handsome, chivalrous, yet cold-eyed killer who roamed the prairie, a kind friend to children and a quick-drawing punisher of evildoers.” He died at age 39, and you liken his life to a Shakespearean tragedy. Explain how that comparison fits.

Hickock fits into that tragic mold dating from Euripides in Ancient Greece and elevated by Shakespeare of the hero who attained heights, but flaws felled him. The West changed fast around Wild Bill Hickock, and he was unable to adapt–and he was a gunfighter going blind.

Like many tragic heroes in literature, he sensed his days were short and life had been unfair but he courageously accepted what was to come. Hickock was an honorable man ultimately dealt a bad hand.

Tom Clavin will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, March 27, at 5:00 to sign copies of and discuss Wild Bill. Lemuria has chosen Wild Bill as its April 2019 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Tom Clavin’s ‘Wild Bill’ sets record straight on wild west gunfighter

By Guest Author

On March 21, 2019

In History, Western

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion Ledger Sunday print edition (March 17)

For those not especially knowledgeable about tales of the old frontier (other than movies and TV shows), Tom Clavin’s Wild Bill is full of surprises.

The first surprise in the book subtitled “The True Story of the American Frontier’s First Gunfighter” is that that Wild Bill Hickok’s name wasn’t Bill.

It’s believed that the man born as James Butler Hickok often joked with his brother Lorenzo by calling each other Bill. Since he answered to it, the name stuck. It may be also that James was known as the Wild Bill and his brother was the Tame Bill.

He signed all documents J.B. Hickok throughout his life.

Whether true or apocryphal, there’s no dispute that Wild Bill was an incredible marksman. Ambidextrous, he early on carried Colt Navy .36-cal. pistols facing butt out on each hip, which he later exchanged for double-action Colt .44s filed down for quicker action. He shot with both hands simultaneously and equally accurately.

“Witnesses report seeing Hickok driving a cork through the neck of a whiskey bottle at 20 paces, splitting a bullet on the edge of dime at the same distance, and putting as many as a dozen bullet holes in a tomato can that had been tossed in the air,” Clavin reports.

This skill made him a formidable foe in a gun battle and it also tended to dissuade lawbreakers when he served as marshal for the town of Abilene, Kansas, frequently putting on shows to demonstrate his prowess.

He also didn’t quite fit his “wild” moniker in his bearing and manner, in that he was by all accounts a cool customer. Raised in an abolitionist family in Illinois, during the Civil War, he served as a Union scout and spy, often going behind Confederate lines, and was able to coolly talk his way out of some tight binds. It was this ability to talk his way out of trouble, backed by his reputation as a crack shot, that later served him well as a lawman.

Much of what is known of Hickok through movies and Wild West shows is also probably fabricated, Clavin reveals. For example, it’s doubtful, he says, that Hickok and Calamity Jane were lovers. While they were friends, contemporary accounts seem to indicate that the somewhat dandy-ish Hickok who wore expensive clothes and bathed every day (an unheard-of practice at the time), considered her rather uncouth. She was prone to drunkenness and a prostitute who also wrangled horses, mules and cattle, usually wore men’s clothes, and was not known for her hygiene.

He also was devoted to his wife, Agnes, whom he married rather late in life (about the time he knew Jane), and she was flamboyant in a different way, as the owner of a circus and a world-renowned performer.

Calamity Jane claimed she and Hickok were lovers and had herself buried next to him at Deadwood, S.D., where he was shot dead from behind while playing what came to be called the dead man’s hand in poker: two pair, aces and eights.

What is known, according to Clavin, was that Hickok was the first fast-draw gunslinger in the Old West. His killing of a man in Springfield, Missouri, (Clavin says Independence, Missouri) July 21, 1865, by quick draw methods—rather than pacing off a duel—was widely reported and was quickly emulated across the West.

Unfortunately, because it also happened while he was quite young, it caused “shootists” who came along after to seek him out to show who was the fastest draw. He died at 39, Aug. 2, 1876, victim of a self-styled gunslinger who crept up on him.

But if a bushwhacker didn’t get him, the times would have. Hickok set the mold for gunman/lawmen who faced off in high noon style, but when he was killed, towns were shifting to “peace officers,” who arrested lawbreakers to take them before a judge, Clavin notes.

Hickok remained true to himself “while the West changed around him.”

Wild Bill is filled with the famous names of the West, such as Buffalo Bill Cody, Kit Carson, and the rest. It is a fascinating account of an incredible Western icon, diligently researched, and breath-taking in its scope.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

Leaving Never Hurts as Much as Being Left Behind: Jeff Zentner’s ‘Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee’

By Former Lemurians

On March 19, 2019

In OZ: Young Adult Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

As a 32 year-old man, I realize that I’m probably not the person who’s supposed to be writing this post about this delightful new YA book by Jeff Zentner. I am certainly not the intended primary audience. But sometimes a person wants to read about people who are not exactly like himself, and I was young, once, giving me as good a frame of reference as required. And I was the person who encountered this book. So I shall tell about it.

Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee is about two teenage girls, Delia Wilkes and Josie Howard, who are trying to navigate the end of their high school while hosting a horror-movie-of-the-week TV show on a public access channel in Jackson, Tennessee.

Delia and her mother, both struggling with depression, were abandoned ten years earlier by Delia’s father, who left behind only an extensive collection of cheesy horror tapes in his wake. Delia loves the movies for two reasons: first, they remind her of him. Second, Delia keeps the flame for all the mediocre people of the world, “the ones who try their hardest to make something beautiful, something great, something that someone will remember and talk about when they’re gone–and they come up short. And not by a little bit. By a lot.” Delia, an average student, feels a great kinship with these people.

She does create one thing, though, by force of will–Midnite Matinee–in the hopes that her father will see it while flipping channels one day and be proud of her, or regret leaving, or…something.

Delia’s co-host, best friend, and general partner-in-crime is Josie Howard. Josie has dreamed of a career in television since as long as she could remember. She seems, to most people, to shine just a little bit brighter than Delia. She’s headed to four-year university instead of community college, and attracts all the boys she and Delia meet together, including one Lawson Vargas, a MMA fighter who goes to a different school, and turns out to be deeper than at initial glance. Josie is extremely loyal to Delia, but her parents are pressuring her to pursue an internship at the Food Network in Knoxville if she is serious about her TV dreams.

But Delia has a plan. The hosts of Midnite Matinee have been invited to ShiverCon in Orlando, and have a chance to meet the influential Jack Divine, who’s as famous in the horror-hosting world as a person can be. Maybe if Divine can help Midnite Matinee reach a certain level of success, Josie wouldn’t have to leave Jackson to become famous on TV. Furthermore, Delia has hired a private detective to track down her missing father, who just happens to live in Boca Raton, a few hours south of Orlando. Can Delia possibly confront both her past, through her father, and her future, in Jack Divine, in one trip?

Delia, Josie, and Lawson are extremely vivid, charming characters with clear motivations facing real change in a pivotal time in their lives. Delia and Josie’s sassy humor gives welcome levity to the big decisions they have to face. Their stakes never feel forced (although there is one somewhat cartoonish episode during the Florida part of the adventure), and their reactions feel perfectly natural. Like Delia and Josie themselves, mostly I wished that their story together wouldn’t end.

If you want to take that journey with Delia and Josie, we here at Lemuria have two great ways for you to do it. First, we still have some signed first editions available at our online store.

Second, if you’re like me, you like to listen to audiobooks in addition to reading, because then you have twice the time available for books. But boxed audiobooks are inconvenient and expensive, so you’ve probably been paying for digital audiobooks an Audible subscription, right?

Well, how about supporting your local independent bookstore instead? With libro.fm, now you can do both. Click the banner below to begin. By selecting Lemuria as your home store, every audiobook you purchase helps support us, your local bookstore, instead of a huge corporate monolith. We sure would appreciate it. And if you’re thinking about listening to Rayne and Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, narrators Phoebe Strole as Delia and Sophie Amoss as Josie make a great book even better.

A life spared amid a reign of terror in Lovejoy Boteler’s ‘Crooked Snake’

By Guest Author

On March 13, 2019

In Biography/Memoir, Southern History

By Charlie Spillers. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 10)

“I don’t know how many people were kidnapped in Mississippi in 1968, but I was one of them,” writes author Lovejoy Boteler in the first sentence of the Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard. Kidnapped at 18 by murderous escaped convicts, Boteler pens a fascinating account of the life and crimes of one of his kidnappers, Albert Lepard. In this remarkable book the author puts readers in the minds of convicts, lawmen, and dozens of victims. He takes us along on desperate escapes, intense manhunts, and lives scarred by crimes Lepard committed.

Sentenced to life in Parchman for the murder of an elderly woman, Albert Lepard escaped from prison six times in 14 years. During one of those escapes, Lepard kidnapped Lovejoy Boteler, stuck a gun in his ribs, and forced him to drive Lepard and another escaped convict from Grenada to Memphis. During the trip, young Botelor’s quick thinking averted an armed robbery and possibly another murder.

In Crooked Snake, Boteler pieces together the story of this cold-blooded murderer’s life using historical records and personal interviews with ex-convicts who ran with Lepard, family members who sheltered the fugitive during his escapes, the lawmen who hunted him, and the people he victimized.

When he conducted interviews for the book Boteler established rapport with fellow victims and elicited their chilling stories. They are bound by common horror and experiences with the same cold-blooded killer. John Nellum was ten years old when Lepard and two other escaped convicts broke into his home, tied up John, his 12-year old brother and their father, and held them for several hours. Lying face down with his hands bound, John was sure he was going to die. His heart felt like it would leap out of his chest as Lepard pressed the barrel of a rifle against the father’s head.

“I got ninety-nine years and one dark Sunday and it won’t make a damn bit of difference to me if I blow your head off right now,” Lepard declared as he placed his finger on the trigger.

Decades later, John still struggles with the memory of being tied up when he was ten. “What a crapshoot,” the author thought after interviewing John. “His psyche had been indelibly seared at the tender age of ten. At least I had been eighteen when I met Lepard.” Like 10-year old John Nellum, the then 18-year old Boteler faced pure evil and thought he was going to die during his intense encounter with Lepard.

Seventy-four year old Mary Young was not so fortunate. Lepard and Joe Edwards went to her home where they tied and blindfolded her. They pistol-whipped her and demanded she tell them where money was hidden in the house. When she refused to talk, Lepard went into a blind fury. He grabbed a claw hammer, swung it wildly and hit her in the head. They threw her on a bed, still tied and blindfolded. She was gagged but they could hear her moans. After finding money, they poured kerosene on Mary and the bed, and lit it. Lepard and Edwards walked out and coldly counted their loot while the house was consumed by flames and Mary Young burned to death.

The author was seared by his own experiences while crammed together with Lepard and another convict in the cab of a pickup truck during that long trip to Memphis. He was sure he was going to die. Lepard not only spared his life, but performed a small act of kindness when they let him go. Boteler always wondered why Lepard let him live. Through his research, the author finally uncovered the likely reason and reveals it on the last page of the book.

Joe Edwards was convicted with Lepard of the murder of Mary Young. Writing of Edwards, who became a preacher, Boteler says, “In old age, he is a man who struggles with a past he cannot change–one that holds him fast and won’t let go.” The same is true for the author who has spent a lifetime living with a terrifying experience and wondering why a murderer spared him. Readers can be thankful it inspired him to write this compelling book.

Charlie Spillers is the bestselling author of Confessions of An Undercover Agent: Adventures, Close Calls and the Toll of a Double Life and Whirlwind: A Frank Marsh Novel, an international thriller. Flashpoint, the sequel to Whirlwind will be released later this year.

Haunting Mississippi images in Florence Mars’ ‘Mississippi Witness’

By Guest Author

On February 25, 2019

In African-American, Civil Rights, Photography, Southern History

By Jim Ewing. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 24)

Many recall Florence Mars from her groundbreaking book Witness in Philadelphia, her personal account of the upheaval that surrounded her native Philadelphia, Mississippi, in the wake of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964.

But perhaps little known until now with the publication of Mississippi Witness: The Photographs of Florence Mars, it’s revealed that Mars was a talented photographer, as well.

James T. Campbell, a Stanford University professor, writes in an excellent introduction to the photos that Mars only started photographing her surroundings after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing separate but equal schools. Mars writes that she recognized that the world in which she was living was soon to be a thing of the past and wanted to capture it on film.

The photos, curated by Elaine Owens, recently retired from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, were mostly taken from 1954 to 1964.

Mars was not a professional photographer, though she exhibits mastery of the form in her work. Rather, she was born into relative wealth in Neshoba County, her family owning thousands of acres of land, a livestock auction, and a mercantile business in the county seat.

Like Eudora Welty, a writer who also picked up a camera and chronicled the people, places and things around her during the Depression two decades before, she applied her own knowledge and interests to her work. And, like Welty, the photos were published in definitive form only years after they were taken.

As Campbell writes, the “similarities in their circumstances and sensibilities are obvious. Single white women, they lived at once inside and outside the confines of the conservative, racist, patriarchal society. Solitary by nature, both understood the yearning for connection. Acutely observant, both saw the wonder in ordinary life, the aching beauty that survived the ugliness.”

Many of the photos are simply haunting. While most are portraits without name, background or explanation, they are environmental in that the elements of the photos tell a great deal—perhaps more than simple words can tell.

For example, one shows a young black girl facing the camera in a cotton field where the stalks tower over her. At her feet, dragged behind, is a cavernous cotton sack filled to near bursting by the bolls she has picked, perhaps weighing as much as herself. The expression on her face is at once sad and defiant, resigned, proud and beaten. It is the face of a child living the life of a hardworking adult, too young to be careworn, too old to be that of a child.

In another, a young black woman is washing clothes in a galvanized tub, her hands gnarled by the work, her face a portrait in stoicism, scrubbing out dirt.

Others include:

White jurors taking a break in the Emmett Till trial, which Mars attended. Their casual, exasperated looks don’t exactly telegraph a fair hearing.
A white performer in grinning black face entertaining lounging white farmers in overalls at the stockyard at Philadelphia.
A young black woman washing naked white children on a porch at the Neshoba County Fair, 1955. In the notes section at the end of the book, the authors relate that Mars had penciled a caption on the back of the print: “Certain things are taken to be self-evident.”

Mars, Campbell writes, stopped taking photos after the civil rights workers were killed, as “the tense atmosphere made photography difficult.” In its stead, Mars confided “writing took over from the photography in the middle of my life.”

Her Witness in Philadelphia was published in 1977. She died in 2006.

Mars’ photographs are as she intended, an enduring testament to a time in Mississippi long gone. Printed on heavy stock in a large format, they are a rare treasure.

Jim Ewing, a former writer and editor at the Clarion Ledger, is the author of seven books including his latest, Redefining Manhood: A Guide for Men and Those Who Love Them.

James T. Campbell and Elaine Owens will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, February 27, at 5:00 p.m. to sign copies of and discuss Mississippi Witness.

‘Just Trying to Have School’ records how students, teachers, administrators experienced desegregation

By Guest Author

On February 18, 2019

In Civil Rights, Southern History

By Steve Yates. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 17)

“You realize you are digging up some old bones,” Leon Johnson, one of the first black students to integrate DeKalb High School in Kemper County, told author James H. Adams.

Both James and his coauthor Natalie G. Adams could identify with this sentiment firsthand. They, too, had experienced desegregation 45 years before Johnson closed a phone call with those fitting words. James and Natalie kept digging, and the result is the sweeping history Just Trying to Have School: The Struggle for Desegregation in Mississippi.

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, no state fought longer or harder to preserve segregated schools than Mississippi.

“We’ll go on as always.” “It won’t affect us.” “Let them enforce it.” The authors glean these quotes that rolled in defiance from the tongues of superintendents that year in Mississippi.

This massive resistance came to a crashing halt in October 1969 when the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education that “the obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools.”

Over seven years the authors interviewed more than one hundred parents, teachers, students, principals, superintendents, and school board members who did the heavy lifting in what the authors call “one of the most significant social and educational changes in the twentieth century.”

Thirty of the thirty-three Mississippi districts named in the 1969 case were ordered to open as desegregated schools after Christmas break. With little guidance from state officials and no formal training or experience in effective school desegregation processes, ordinary people were thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Before this book, their stories were largely ignored in desegregation literature.

The tasks the authors described proved arduous and complex. How were bus routes determined? Who lost their position as principal? Who was assigned—students and teachers—to what classes?

Without losing sight of the important larger forces in precipitating social change, the authors shift attention to how the daily work of “just trying to have school” helped shape the contours of desegregation in communities still living with the decisions made fifty years ago.

Natalie G. Adams is director of New College and professor of social and cultural studies in education at the University of Alabama. She is co-author of Cheerleader! An American Icon and co-editor of Geographies of Girlhood: Identities In-Between. James H. Adams is professor of instructional systems and workforce development at Mississippi State University. He has published articles in the Journal of Career and Technical Education, the International Journal of Instructional Media, the Journal of Interactive Learning Research, and the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies.

The thorough authors provide chapters that cover almost every aspect of public-school life. There are chapters on black parents, superintendents, principals and local enforcement, teachers, sports, and extracurricular life such as dances, or the lack thereof. The authors include two telling chapters on resistance and protest and on what they call resistance through exodus in the flight of white families to private academies.

And there is an invaluable and necessary chapter on lessons learned. Was it a success? The authors hear from multiple authorities that that measure is relative to the metrics applied and the context of the narrative demanded. But this book, reliant above all on oral history, that great, leavening counternarrative, yields unforgettable quotes.

The authors cite Joy Tyner, principal at Clinton’s Northside elementary: “I love the fact that I can walk down the hall and look into any class and it looks like Mississippi.”

Steve Yates lives in Flowood and is the author of the novels The Legend of the Albino Farm, Morkan’s Quarry, and The Teeth of the Souls.

Natalie Adams will appear at the Mississippi Book Festival August 17 as a participant in the “A Spotlight on Mississippi Civil Rights” panel at 12:00 p.m. at the State Capitol Room 201 A.

Author Q & A with Maurice Carlos Ruffin

By Guest Author

On February 17, 2019

In African-American, Fiction, Southern Fiction

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger (February 17). Click here to read this interview on the Clarion-Ledger’s website

New Orleans native Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel is a darkly thought-provoking satire on race in America that is based on one African-American man’s plan to spare his teenage son from racial disparities he and his own father have endured–thanks to a new medical procedure that can change his biracial son’s skin white.

We Cast a Shadow has been called “a surrealistic satire about identity, race, and family relations” with a plot that, though many will find outrageous, will make readers pause and think.

An award-winning writer, Ruffin has earned an Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for Novel-in-Progress. His work has been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, the Massachusetts Review, and others.

He is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and is a member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance.

In We Cast a Shadow, a well-intentioned and unnamed father of the future–a hardworking, goal-oriented black attorney–works to secure enough wealth to have his son Nigel undergo a “demelanization” procedure to change the teenager’s skin to white, thereby promising his child a brighter future. How did you develop this story idea, and why?

Maurice Carlos Ruffin

I thought about all the ways we’ve tried to push against racism in our history as a nation. We’ve protested, fought the Civil War, passed laws, and, yet, we still deal with the problem today.

The narrator wants to protect his son, and he wants to do it in a way that is foolproof and effective. He reckons that no one will bother his son if he’s white! Of course, we see celebrities alter themselves all the time to gain notoriety: skin tanning, liposuction, rhinoplasty, etc. I was thinking about what would happen once we can change virtually any part of our bodies. It’s not so far-fetched now that we can genetically modify babies in the womb!

It’s clear throughout the story that Nigel and his mother are against the idea of having the procedure done, but the father is adamant. In the end, three lives are changed forever–each of their destinies a thought-provoking surprise. What lessons can readers learn from this anonymous dad’s sobering tale?

One lesson is that racism affects us all. It doesn’t matter your race, gender, or age. None of us are really safe until all of us are. Another lesson is that none of us should be too arrogant about our beliefs. Both parents are sure their approach is right. But what if both are right and wrong at the same time? A bit of humility might go a long way to ultimately ending racism and the damage we do to ourselves and our families.

The word “shadow” is used frequently in the book, as a noun, verb or adjective. Tell me about the title of the book. Was it based on the novelist E.M. Forster’s quote from A Room with a View? “We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place . . . because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm . . . and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”

I wasn’t consciously aware of the Forster quote! I was thinking of Kanye West’s song “All of the Lights.” In the video for the song we see that he’s trying to protect his daughter from the dangers of their rough neighborhood. With my narrator, he wants his son to have every possible opportunity that any American child should have. He wants him to see “all of the lights.” I flipped that idea on its head to create the title. They are caught in the shadows.

A character in the book told the narrator that race was “just an idea,” and said, “We’ve got to ignore race to transcend it.” Can you explain what this means, and do you agree?

It’s an old idea. People often say they don’t see race, as if that’s a good thing. However, if you don’t see race, then you’ll never understand how policies related to housing, policing, health, education, economics, etc. more negatively affect black people and other people of color.

Racism is a sickness. Imagine how terrible it would be if your daughter had diabetes and you said, “I don’t see diabetes!” That child would not do well with you serving her waffles with syrup each morning. If there is a solution to America’s racism problem, it lies in turning off the systems that automatically disenfranchise people every day. But you can’t turn off the systems if you refuse to see them.

Do you see another novel in your future soon?

Absolutely. I’m writing it now. But don’t ask me what it’s about because I don’t know. I tend to throw everything into the pot until it smells right. So, I’ll keep working on it until it’s a dish I’d serve to people I care about.

I always rely on faith that the writing will work out. It usually does. It did with this novel!

Signed first edition copies copies of We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin are available at Lemuria’s online store.

Hip-Hop Encore: ‘On the Come Up’ by Angie Thomas

By Former Lemurians

On February 5, 2019

In African-American, OZ: Young Adult Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

Jackson native and best-selling young adult phenomenon Angie Thomas returns with the publication of her second novel, On the Come Up, today. It comes with a lot of expectations after the acclaim, success, and movie adaptation of her debut, The Hate U Give. I imagine that a lot of fans are torn about what they want: more of what they liked about her first book, but not the EXACT same thing. It’s a classic dilemma.

On the Come Up returns to Garden Heights, the same neighborhood from The Hate U Give. This story is set on the the other side of the neighborhood, however. The effects of the climax of the last book are still being felt. Khalil’s death awakens political sensibilities, but these characters didn’t know him personally.

The hero of the story is Bri Jackson, an aspiring rapper guided by her gangta Aunt Pooh, who fosters her dreams and ambitions, but has worries of her own. While biding her time to making it big, Bri buses to a creative arts magnet school in the tony Midtown neighborhood with her best friends, Malik, a budding activist, and Sonny, an excellent student torn between focusing on ACT prep and pursuing a mysterious but intriguing online relationship. Bri carries the mantle of her father, underground rap legend Lawless, who was murdered when she was a child. She lives with her mother Jayda, a recovering drug addict, and brother Trey, a snarky, egghead going through a post-graduate slump to help support the family.

One of the things that Thomas is so great at, both here and in her last book, is how she populates her books with believable, unique characters which make her communities seem real. I haven’t mentioned all the characters here (including one of my favorites), but they all contribute to the world-building Thomas excels at.

It’s good writing, period, but especially heartening for one of Thomas’s missions: for young black and people of color readers, it helps them see themselves reflected in media, and for white readers, it helps them see the very human side of a world they may only be familiar with from the news.

But Thomas can do more than just characters, she can set up a plot as well. Here, Bri recognizes the power of her prodigious hip-hop abilities, but the problem is, she isn’t sure what she wants with it. She wants to express herself and her world, but she is also chasing commercial success, because her family is facing real financial distress, the kind where the fridge is empty and the lights go off. When events keep casting her image as something different than what she is, she struggles to decide whether to lean in to it, or whether to break free.

There’s more to talk about, but I don’t think I need to go with the hard-sell here. Some people might like The Hate U Give more, but plenty of readers will find On the Come Up even better. If you liked the first book, you’ll like this one, too. I encourage you to experience On the Come Up for yourself.

Signed copies of On the Come Up are available from Lemuria online or in-store right now. Angie Thomas will be in Jackson on Thursday, February 28, at Belhaven University’s Center for the Arts for a ticketed event. Call Lemuria at 601-366-7619 or visit in store for details.

Snowden Wright’s effervescent ‘American Pop’ goes down smooth

By Former Lemurians

On February 4, 2019

In Fiction, Southern Fiction

by Andrew Hedglin

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an early copy of American Pop last August. The weekend before, I had just finished making a long overdue pilgrimage to Graceland. After which, as sometimes happens in Memphis, I found myself in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, the fabled start of the Mississippi Delta. I came back to work on Monday to find an incredible book that began where I had just been, and, in some ways, where I have always been, in the tangled legacy of the South in the 20th century.

I was very excited to see a family tree in the first few pages. From Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, some of my very favorite novels have been multi-generational family sagas, books that allow you to hear the echoes of the past. This book did not disappoint on that front.

The fortunes of the Forster family are tied to the genius of paterfamilias Houghton Forster and his invention, Panola Cola, invented fictitiously in Batesville, Mississippi, in 1890. The Forsters’ good fortune in inventing PanCola, as it came to be known, relied on Houghton’s intelligence, luck, and the power of love for his soon-to-be wife Annabelle.

But the story of the Forsters is not an elevator that only goes up, and the story ends well past the end of their cola empire. The emotional center of the are the lives of the four Forster children, Montgomery, Lance, Ramsey, and Harold. Their choices, tragedies, and limitations define their family’s fate, although the vision and determination of one last Forster has the chance to hold the center together, if only somebody in charge had the wisdom to recognize the real thing when they saw it.

There is a mysterious coda to the cola chronicle, one where the truth to decoding the past traverses the lonely stretch of Highway 49 between Yazoo County and Millsaps College here in Jackson. A truth that, if found, could find the missing link–the secret ingredient, if you will–to finally understanding the Forster family legacy.

While there is melancholy infused in the center of this concoction, it would be misleading to let you think this reads like a sad, sorrowful tale. American Pop is very alive and frequently funny, drenched in irony told with a Southern drawl. There are sly winks and “fridge brilliance” to spare that reward close reading. There are references to pop culture (no pun intended) and Mississippi history that are guaranteed to make you smile. And t all starts with that party in the Peabody Hotel.

Ultimately, I can recommend American Pop as one of the best books you might read this year. Grab a can of Pan and get ready to settle in for some major fun.

Snowden Wright will be Lemuria on Tuesday, February 5, at 5:00 to sign and read from American Pop. Lemuria has chosen American Pop as one of its February 2019 selections for its First Editions Club for Fiction.

Tag: Mississippi Book Festival 2019 (Page 4 of 7)

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A life spared amid a reign of terror in Lovejoy Boteler’s ‘Crooked Snake’

Haunting Mississippi images in Florence Mars’ ‘Mississippi Witness’

‘Just Trying to Have School’ records how students, teachers, administrators experienced desegregation

Author Q & A with Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Hip-Hop Encore: ‘On the Come Up’ by Angie Thomas

Snowden Wright’s effervescent ‘American Pop’ goes down smooth

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