Author Event – Lemuria Books

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By Susan O’Bryan. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 9)

Sisters of the Undertow is not a long book. It also is not a quick or easy read requiring little thought or mental involvement.

Instead, award-winning author Johnnie Bernhard packs delivers a punch to the gut in her third novel, one that makes you think twice about sisterhood, luck and loss. Her characters come to life in what reads—and feels—more like a memoir than a novel.

The story is told from the perspective of Kimberly Ann Hodges, a miracle child born in late 1970 to David and Sandy Hodges, a couple desperate for a baby after several miscarriages. Her parents are overjoyed, and proclaim how “lucky” they are to have a baby girl.

Sixteen months later, Kathy Renee is born, and the family feels that their luck has run out. The baby is premature, and has a variety of medical and developmental challenges. With all the family attention now on Kathy Renee, Kim, as she prefers to be called, begins to resent being the big sister to someone so unlike herself.

One line in the novel says so much—“We were sisters,” Kim says. “I loved and hated her.”

Their biggest difference has nothing to do with physical traits, though. Instead, it’s the particular focus that each girl has on life and faith. Kim feels the pain of ridicule and strict parenting, while Kathy Renee finds the joy in every single day.

Through her story telling, Bernhard shows the strong to be weak and vulnerable, while the seemingly lesser stands firm against the ebb and flow of life.

Kim learns early to distrust men, while Kathy Renee likes to bring home guys considered to be outsiders. One sister trades a small hometown near Houston, Texas, for the co-ed life at Texas Tech University as an escape, while the other cherishes the routine of family and church. Kim prefers books over people, while her little sister only wants to help others. One wants to be a librarian, while the other wants to be a nurse’s aide.

Through their own experiences, the sisters learn to cope with the tides of change and loss. And through these fictional characters, readers gain insight into what it means to weather storms together rather than alone.

Susan O’Bryan was a journalist for 30 years before she joined the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 2010 as a web content coordinator. She is a freelance writer for several newspapers and literary review sites.

Johnnie Bernhard is scheduled to be at Lemuria on Saturday, April 4 at 2:00 to sign and discuss Sisters of the Undertow.

Author Q & A with Taylor Brown

By Guest Author

On March 15, 2020

In Fiction

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

A native of the Georgia coast, Taylor Brown offers readers his fourth novel, Pride of Eden, as an “environmentalism” tale of majestic animals that should be living in the wild, and the flawed characters who fight to save them from human exploitation.

Brown’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Rumpus, Garden & Gun, Chautauqua, The North Carolina Literary Review, and many other publications.

He is the author of a short story collection, In the Season of Blood and Gold, and each of his three previous novels, Fallen Land, The River of Kings, and Gods of Howl Mountain, became a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. He has also captured the Montana Prize in Fiction.

An Eagle Scout who graduated from the University of Georgia in 2005, Brown has lived in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and the mountains of western North Carolina. Today he makes his home in Savannah, Ga.

Pride of Eden reveals environmental and moral lessons through a narrative that combines the heroism of its flawed characters with the tenderness and fury of the animals they work to save–AND “an underworld of smugglers, gamblers, breeders, trophy hunters and others who exploit exotic game.” It’s also an original, out of the ordinary kind of story. Tell me how you formed the idea for this tale–you must be an enormous animal lover yourself!

Taylor Brown

Indeed, I’ve always been an animal lover, and animals have always found their way into my work–though more indirectly until now. A few years ago, I visited Carolina Tiger Rescue in Pittsboro, North Carolina–a big cat sanctuary that takes in tigers, lions, ocelots, servals, and other wild cats from all over the region. There’s a story behind every denizen there, and most come from pretty bad conditions such as roadside zoos, negligent private owners, circuses, etc. Their stories really moved me, and I began to formulate the idea of someone who took the “rescue” part of an exotic wildlife rescue quite literally…

Main character Anse Caulfield is a retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran who runs Little Eden, an exotic animal wildlife reserve off the Georgia coast. He lives to rescue elephants, big cats, rhinos, and other animals, to save them from a life lived in sideshows or as part of a hunter’s “collection.” What drove Anse to devote his life to this cause?

Anse has witnessed, and even been an accessory to, a lot of trauma visited on the animal kingdom, whether it was his experience in Vietnam, his time as a soldier of fortune in Africa, or his career as a quarter horse jockey. So, I think he’s burdened with a lot of guilt and hoping to atone for some of those things in his past, whether they were his own sins or those of his fellow man. That said, he’s a bit of an outlaw and curmudgeon at heart, and he doesn’t always go about things in the most legal manner.

Author Ron Rash has called Pride of Eden a “visionary novel of scarred souls seeking redemption not only for themselves but, in their limited way, for us all.” In what ways would you agree with this observation?

I do think the characters in this book are seeking redemption in their own way. Most of them are dealing with some trauma in their past that continues to haunt and pain them on a daily basis. One of the beautiful things about our species is that we often heal through helping others, be they our fellow humans or members of the animal kingdom.

I think these characters–Anse and Malaya especially–have witnessed things that make them question the “humane-ness” of humanity. By working to help these captive and abused animals, they’re helping to redeem not only themselves, but their faith in humanity as a whole. On the other hand, they’re certainly not saints–they’re as flawed as anyone, and things don’t always go according to plan.

In addition to the obvious flashes of your sizable imagination throughout Pride of Eden, you add a dash of mystery. Is there any chance there will ever be a sequel to this story?

Thank you, Jana. That mystery reminds me of the words of a writer friend of mine, Matthew Neill Null, who once said, “The lives of animals are mysterious, and mystery is the lifeblood of fiction.” Those words continue to resonate with me, whether I’m watching the red-tailed hawk that hunts over our neighborhood or writing about the elephants and rhinos I visited in South Africa. I tried to infuse that mystery into the novel.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some ideas percolating for a sequel to “Pride of Eden.” Without giving anything away, I’m particularly interested in the story of wolf reintroduction in the American West, as well as the work of Animal Defenders International (ADI), who’ve been instrumental in rescuing animals from circuses in various countries of South America and bringing them to sanctuaries in the U.S. and South Africa.

Why is this a book that you believed needed to be written NOW?

Well, I think the clock is ticking for so many species. Scientists say we’re living through the “Anthropocene Extinction,” in which human activity is correlated with extinction rates hundreds of times higher than normal. It may well be the defining story of our epoch.

We’re living in an age when there are about as many captive tigers in the state of Texas alone as left in the wild in the rest of the world, and in 2018, the last male northern white rhino died living under 24-hour armed guard. I can’t imagine living in a world without such magnificent creatures. I think, if we’re more intimate with the lives and stories of animals, we may be more likely to love, respect, and protect them – and in the process, save something crucial of our own hearts.

Taylor Brown will be at Lemuria on Monday, March 23, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Pride of Eden.

‘Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves’ explores complexities of slave life during peace, war

By Guest Author

On March 9, 2020

In Civil War, Historical Fiction, Southern Fiction

By John Mort. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (March 8)

Bass Reeves—a real, historical figure—was born a slave on an Arkansas plantation in the 1840s. In Sidney Thompson’s new novel, Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves: The Bass Reeves Trilogy, Book One, Reeves grows up to be a big, agreeable man entirely loyal to his master, the redoubtable Master Reeves. Master Reeves is not cruel. When a black scullery maid has her baby, he gives her one day off, and this is regarded as kind by the scullery maid and everyone else.

Slaves have so adapted to this patriarchal economic system that notions of emancipation and equality don’t occur to them. A kind of freedom exists just a few miles to the west, in Oklahoma Territory, but fleeing—running—is a tough concept. If you were beaten or starved, that would be one thing, but Master Reeves would never beat you or withhold food. You may be a slave, but you can live a life on Master Reeves’s plantation. You can marry. You can have kids.

It develops that Bass is an extraordinary marksman, and Master Reeves takes Bass to a number of turkey shoots in Arkansas and the Territory. Bass always wins, and the Master makes good money betting on him. Bass enjoys himself, and sometimes, he can bring those dead turkeys home for the other slaves.

Ignorance may have seemed like bliss, but Bass is a slave and a slave can be moved about like a horse. Old Master Reeves gives Bass to his son, young Master Reeves, who has a plantation down in Texas. Bass has a difficult time understanding this. He doesn’t know where Texas is, and doesn’t want to leave behind his aging parents. How could Master Reeves treat him like this?

The young Master Reeves is an intellectual with all sorts of theories about slavery. He baits Bass with his endless mind-games, trying to cause his new manservant to reveal his true feelings. In many ways, young Master Reeves inadvertently educates Bass and inculcates in him a desire for freedom. Young Reeves is despicable, but he’s also complicated. He fully understands how intelligent Bass is, and potentially how dangerous.

The Civil War has reached the West, and young Master Reeves wants a manservant who can shoot. Most of the Southern officers bring their manservants to the Battle of Wilson’s Creek (near Springfield, Missouri), a Southern victory of sorts that flows into the Southern defeat at Pea Ridge (near Fayetteville, Arkansas). These battles have been written about by historians and novelists alike, but Thompson’s treatment, portraying the war from a slave’s perspective, is unique.

The man-servant’s job is to reload weapons for their masters (for the most part, repeating rifles are not yet in use). But Bass is such an unerring shot that the young Master Reeves loads for his slave. And Bass kills many a Yankee, aiming for the brass buttons of their coats.

Young Master Reeves and Bass return to a changing Texas. The war isn’t over but everyone knows the South will lose. Throughout Bass’s faithful service, young Master Reeves has promised Bass’s manumission, or freedom; secretly, Bass, who has seen some of the world by now, has begun to contemplate running for his freedom into Oklahoma Territory. Just how to maneuver away from the devious young Master Reeves, and how to take leave of his sweetheart, Jennie, occupies the final pages of the first installment of this epic, three-volume portrait of Bass Reeves, the first black deputy west of the Mississippi.

When you’re gifted with the fine sense of characterization Thompson deploys, even the unsubtle subject of slavery grows subtler. His Young Master Reeves is a sort of Nazi, but he’s drawn masterfully. Thompson, once one of Barry Hannah’s students at University of Mississippi, is a highly entertaining writer, and his Bass Reeves emerges as an intelligent, reluctantly violent, sympathetic young man. Readers will find the compelling recreations of two important Civil War battles to be a kind of bonus.

John Mort is the author of Down Along the Piney: Ozarks Stories among others, and the winner of many awards for his fiction including a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.

Sidney Thompson will be at Lemuria on Tuesday, March 10, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves.

Author Q & A with Jerry Mitchell

By Guest Author

On February 2, 2020

In Civil Rights, Southern History

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (February 2)

An assignment to cover the press premiere of a movie 30 years ago would bring a decades-old Mississippi murder case back into the nation’s spotlight–and change the life of not only court reporter Jerry Mitchell, but untold numbers of many who thought justice would never come.

A staff writer for The Clarion-Ledger in 1989 when he attended the press screening of the blockbuster Mississippi Burning film in Jackson, Mitchell inadvertently found himself sitting near two veteran FBI agents and a seasoned journalist who had all been involved with the 1964 murder investigations portrayed in the movie.

The conversations he held with his seatmates after the movie would be the springboard of a career dedicated to pursuing justice for some of the nation’s most infamous cold case murders of the civil rights movement.

Mitchell was stunned to find out that night that none of the 20 Ku Klux Klansmen involved in the deaths of three civil rights workers had been brought to trial. He soon decided to take on the task of investigating–and ultimately reopening–the case himself.

His career memoir, Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era recounts nearly 20 years of investigations of four notorious cases that helped send four Klansmen and a serial killer to prison.

Jerry Mitchell

Mitchell’s work has earned him the title of “one of the most decorated investigative journalists in the country,” with more than 30 national awards to his credit. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, he was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” Columbia’s John Chancellor Award, the George Polk Award, and many others.

After more than 30 years as an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, Mitchell founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting in Jackson in 2019, providing investigative reporting to news outlets and with a goal to “train up the next generation of investigative reporters.”

Below he shares some insights about his career, his new book, and his hopes for the future of investigative journalism.

As a young person, what influenced your interest in journalism, and, specifically, investigative reporting?

My mother had me reading three newspapers a day by the time I was 7. I had no choice! I first experienced journalism in high school and soon gravitated to investigative reporting. Reading All the President’s Men inspired me and made me want to expose wrongdoing and right wrongs. I guess I’ve been doing it ever since.

Tell me about the movie that spurred your interest in the decades-old cold cases of murderers who had never been brought to justice, and why that film prompted you to begin a journey that would take almost as long to right those wrongs.

Watching the film Mississippi Burning outraged me. How could more than 20 Klansmen kill three young men and never be tried for murder? It made no sense. In addition, I saw the movie with two FBI agents who investigated the case and a journalist who covered the case. Watching the film with them made all the difference because they gave me the full story of what happened. That really kickstarted my investigation into the Mississippi Burning case and those that followed.

The late Pulitzer Prize winning author/journalist David Halberstam once called your work “a reflection of what a reporter with a conscience can do,” and Race Against Time has been described as “a remarkable journalistic detective story and a vital piece of American history.” That said, who should read this book, and why?

I would hope anyone who likes to read true crime or true detective stories would enjoy the book. How these horrible killings came to trial decades later is a fascinating tale. Prosecutors, investigators, FBI agents and others all deserve a tremendous amount of credit for piecing these cases together against impossible odds. Most important, the book tells the story of these courageous people in the civil rights movement and their families, who never gave up hope, never stopped believing. They continue to inspire me.

Where do you think Mississippi–and our country–stand today in the journey to racial equality?

Our journey to racial equality in this nation seems to have always been one of a few steps forward and a few steps back. It seems lately we have been taking steps back with white supremacy and white nationalism on the rise. My hope is that we, as a nation, can begin to see what brings us together, rather than what tears us apart. We need each other. Now more than ever.

Please tell me about the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, the nonprofit that you started, and why investigative reporting is especially important in today’s world.

Newsrooms are vanishing across the nation and especially Mississippi. That’s why we started the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting in 2019. We provide newspapers and news outlets with investigative reporting they don’t have the money or manpower to do. We provide news outlets with stories that make a difference. For example, we reported on the powerful control of gangs in Mississippi prisons months before this gang war resulted in the killings of five and countless injuries.

We believe in shining a light into the darkness. We believe in exposing corruption. We believe in telling the truth because the truth still matters. We hope others will join us and help support this valuable mission. Our new offices are located on the Millsaps College campus, where we will begin working with college students in Mississippi. Our goal is to train up the next generation of investigative reporters.

Lemuria has selected Race Against Time its February 2020 selection for its First Editions Club for Nonfiction.

Jerry Mitchell will be Lemuria on Tuesday, February 4, beginning at 4:00 p.m. to sign copies of Race Against Time.

Michell will return on Wednesday, March 18, to sign books at 4:30 p.m., before joining in a conversation at 5:00 p.m. with Rena Evers-Everette, daughter of the late civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

Scholar Phillip Gordon explores all of Faulkner’s walks on the wild side in ‘Gay Faulkner’

By Guest Author

On January 30, 2020

In LGBTQIA+, Southern Fiction

By Jesse Yancy. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (January 26)

In Gay Faulkner, Phillip Gordon examines Faulkner’s interactions with gay men, his immersion in gay subcultures, especially during the 1920s, and his strong and meaningful relationships with specific gay men, particularly his lifelong friend Ben Wasson. Gordon’s study concentrates on As I Lay Dying and the Snopes trilogy with particular emphasis on Darl Bundren and V.K. Ratliff. Gordon states flatly that “the question at the heart of this study is not ‘Was Faulkner gay?’ . . . what this study really seeks to address: Is there a gay Faulkner?”

Gordon seeks to reveal a gay presence not only in Faulkner’s work, but also in his life as well, establishing Faulkner’s awareness of homosexuality and homosexuals, and his acceptance and participation in gay culture. While Gay Faulkner is a solid academic work the notes are as absorbing as the text, and the bibliography constitutes a summation of Queer Faulkner studies. Gordon offers insight, information, and even entertainment for the general reader.

Gordon’s documentation of Faulkner’s stay in New Orleans explores the bohemian atmosphere as well as the writers’ community of the Vieux Carré. Central to this section of the book is Gordon’s account of Faulkner’s relationship with his longtime friend and roommate, the gay artist William Spratling, including an intriguing account of a trip to Italy with Spratling, a journey that resulted in Faulkner’s most openly gay story, “A Divorce in Naples.”

We also discover Faulkner in New York City after the publication of Sanctuary (1931) interacting with the Algonquin Round Table, and his awkward meeting with Alexander Woollcott with his gay friend and sometime agent Ben Wasson and the New Orleans-born gay writer, Lyle Saxon. Gordon describes Faulkner touring Harlem’s gay clubs and cabarets with Carl Van Vechten, where he attended a show by the famous drag “king” Gladys Bentley. This encounter as recounted by Wasson becomes a focal point for establishing the critical importance of the Blotner Papers at Southeastern Missouri State University, which Gordon calls “fascinating, complex, and, for lack of a better word, beautiful.” And despite his earlier disclaimer concerning Faulkner’s personal proclivities, in somewhat of an aside Gordon also avers that “there is evidence in the Blotner papers that suggest our understanding of Faulkner’s sexuality might not be what we have generally assumed.”

Gordon frames Faulkner within the literary milieu of early 20th century Mississippi, which by any standards constitutes the cutting edge of the Southern Renaissance in American literature and includes several prominent gay writers. The queer planter, poet, and memoirist William Alexander Percy of Greenville nurtured a clutch of writers, including Hodding Carter, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, and Wasson. Gordon also illuminates Oxford’s fascinating and cosmopolitan Stark Young as well as the undeservedly obscure poet and scholar Hubert Creekmore of Water Valley.

In a text, Gordon and other queer critics focus on the meaning and nuances of the words used, and amplify their implications. Some readers may think Gordon is reaching to make a point, but in the end, the words and their meanings are there for any reader to understand. Gay Faulkner has a great deal to be recommended; it’s interesting, educational and, yes, entertaining. It is also a much-needed blade to cut the hide-bound conventions surrounding Faulkner and his work.

Jesse Yancy is a writer, editor and gardener living in Jackson.

Phillip Gordon will be at Lemuria on Thursday, March 26, to sign and discuss Gay Faulkner.

History, mystery, and the open road in Nic Stone’s ‘Clean Getaway’

By Former Lemurians

On January 8, 2020

In African-American, Oz: Middle Grade

by Andrew Hedglin

William “Scoob” Lamar, the protagonist of Nic Stone’s fantastic new middle grade adventure, Clean Getaway, has a lot of questions at the beginning of the book. He just doesn’t know it yet.

When his grandmother, his beloved “G’ma,” shows up in an RV at the beginning of his spring break, to jailbreak him from being grounded, he jumps at the chance. He writes a note to his dad, and leaves his phone at home so he can’t be called. Just the wide open road, and the person he adores and trusts most in the world.

It’s not until they leave Atlanta and cross into Alabama that things start to get a little…weird. Why has G’ma sold her house to buy this RV? Did she really just dine-and-dash? Are they really headed all the way to Mexico? And does Scoob’s dad even know where they are?

He’s not getting answers to these questions immediately, but he is learning a lot, that’s for sure. It turns out his G’ma, a white lady, and his G’pop, a black man who he never met and died in prison, tried to take this very road trip all the way back in the 1960s. Of course, they had some help from Green Book, the famous guide for black travelers in the dangerous days of segregation and Jim Crow. As an African-American himself (with a serious, conscientious father), Scoob already knows some things about his history–he’s read To Kill a Mockingbird, and visits MLK’s home and church every January)–but some of what he learns really opens his eyes to how things were (and what still is).

Nic Stone has written an outrageously fun adventure with real tension and emotion mixed in. What really stands as a highlight in how well Stone understand how kids and adults relate to each other, even (and especially) they care a lot about each other. G’ma is completely over-the-top, fun, emotional, and increasingly mysterious, torn between unburdening secrets and teaching and protecting Scoob. Scoob himself is smart and and has a certain down-to-earth cool (he has a girlfriend, Shenice, back home in Atlanta), but can sometimes be a little impulsive and mistake-prone, as well as vulnerable in his powerlessness to the whims of adults, as all kids sometimes feel.

I think this book has a wide audience because while its colorful text (along with evocative illustrations by Dawud Anyabwile) and well-plotted structure are easy enough for kids on the earlier end of middle grade to digest, its keen emotional intelligence and relatable themes keep it interesting for kids on the older end of the middle grade age range. I found it pretty enjoyable as an adult, to tell the truth. As a bonus, this road trip novel even winds its way through Jackson, Mississippi (to pay respects to the great Medgar Evers). Whoever chooses to pick up this great middle school tale, they should know that they’re in for a wild ride!

Nic Stone will be at Lemuria on Friday, January 10, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Clean Getaway, in conversation with Angie Thomas (author of The Hate U Give). Lemuria has selected Clean Getaway as a January 2020 selection for its Oz Books First Editions Club.

‘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.

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.

Tag: Author Event (Page 1 of 15)

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Author Q & A with Taylor Brown

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Author Q & A with Jerry Mitchell

Scholar Phillip Gordon explores all of Faulkner’s walks on the wild side in ‘Gay Faulkner’

History, mystery, and the open road in Nic Stone’s ‘Clean Getaway’

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

Author Q & A with Phil Keith

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

Author Q & A with Lara Prescott

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