Download or read book Late Migrations written by Margaret Renkl and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: “Has the makings of an American classic.” —Ann Patchett Growing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. “Magnificent . . . Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Last Ride to Graceland written by Kim Wright and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction Lauded for her “astute and engrossing” (People) writing style imbued with “originality galore” (RT Book Reviews), Kim Wright channels the best of Jennifer Weiner and Sarah Pekkanen in this delightful novel of self-discovery on the open road as one woman sets out for Graceland hoping to answer the question: Is Elvis Presley her father? Blues musician Cory Ainsworth is barely scraping by after her mother’s death when she discovers a priceless piece of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia hidden away in a shed out back of the family’s coastal South Carolina home: Elvis Presley’s Stutz Blackhawk, its interior a time capsule of the singer’s last day on earth. A backup singer for the King, Cory’s mother Honey was at Graceland the day Elvis died. She quickly returned home to Beaufort and married her high school sweetheart. Yearning to uncover the secrets of her mother’s past—and possibly her own identity—Cory decides to drive the car back to Memphis and turn it over to Elvis’s estate, retracing the exact route her mother took thirty-seven years earlier. As she winds her way through the sprawling deep south with its quaint towns and long stretches of open road, the burning question in Cory’s mind—who is my father?—takes a backseat to the truth she learns about her complicated mother, the minister's daughter who spent a lifetime struggling to conceal the consequences of a single year of rebellion.
Download or read book Graceland written by Karal Ann Marling and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes what Graceland, the home Elvis Presley built in Memphis, tells about the late singer's life and personality.
Download or read book GraceLand written by Chris Abani and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2005-01-26 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Graceland is a dazzling debut by a singular new talent The sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria, provides the backdrop to the story of Elvis, a teenage Elvis impersonator hoping to make his way out of the ghetto. Broke, beset by floods, and beatings by his alcoholic father, and with no job opportunities in sight, Elvis is tempted by a life of crime. Thus begins his odyssey into the dangerous underworld of Lagos, guided by his friend Redemption and accompanied by a restless hybrid of voices including The King of Beggars, Sunday, Innocent and Comfort. Ultimately, young Elvis, drenched in reggae and jazz, and besotted with American film heroes and images, must find his way to a GraceLand of his own. Nuanced, lyrical, and pitch perfect, Abani has created a remarkable story of a son and his father, and an examination of postcolonial Nigeria where the trappings of American culture reign supreme. "A richly detailed, poignant, and utterly fascinating look into another culture and how it is cross-pollinated by our own. It brings to mind the work of Ha Jin in its power and revelation of the new."--T. Coraghessan Boyle
Download or read book Losing Graceland written by Micah Nathan and published by Broadway Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking a week-long driving job after a failed relationship and his father's sudden death, Ben is shocked when his employer appears to be a still-living Elvis, who needs Ben's help to get to Memphis and search for a missing grandchild. Original.
Download or read book Elvis and Ginger written by Ginger Alden and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Elvis Presley’s fiancée and last love tells her story and sets the record straight in this deeply personal memoir that reveals what really happened in the final years of the King of Rock n' Roll. Elvis Presley and Graceland were fixtures in Ginger Alden’s life; after all, she was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. But she had no idea that she would play a part in that enduring legacy. For more than three decades Ginger has held the truth of their relationship close to her heart. Now she shares her unique story… In her own words, Ginger details their whirlwind romance—from first kiss to his stunning proposal of marriage. And for the very first time, she talks about the devastating end of it all and the fifty thousand mourners and reporters who descended on Graceland in 1977, exposing Ginger to the reality of living in the spotlight of a short yet immortal life. Above it all, Ginger rescues Elvis from the hearsay, rumors, and tabloid speculations of his final year by shedding a frank yet personal light on a very public legend. From a unique and intimate perspective, she reveals the man—complicated, romantic, fallible, and human—behind the myth, a superstar worshipped by millions and loved by Ginger Alden. INCLUDES PHOTOS
Download or read book Running to Graceland written by John Slayton and published by Wise Ink. This book was released on 2018-04-23 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of '81, Jack has graduated from high school and is headed out on one last road trip with his friends Curtis and Bruce. He can't imagine how out of control things are about to get. When Curtis shoots an old man who catches the boys trespassing, Bruce decides to go home and face the music--but even though Jack knows he may be throwing his life away, he can't bring himself to abandon his best friend. He and Curtis flee north, directionless and hopeless . . . until the ghost of Elvis appears in Jack's dreams, and things take a turn for the bizarre. If the two boys head to Graceland, promises the King, all will be made right for them. And so, in one last quest for salvation, Jack and Curtis turn toward Memphis-- leaving cops, preachers, and all manner of strangeness in their wake.
Download or read book Late City written by Robert Olen Butler and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize–winning author shares an “exceptionally nuanced, tender, funny, tragic, and utterly transfixing portrait” of one man’s troubled century (Booklist, starred review). At 115 years old, former newspaperman Sam Cunningham is also the last surviving veteran of World War I. As he prepares to die in a Chicago nursing home, the results of the 2016 presidential election come in—and he finds himself in a wide-ranging conversation with a surprising God. As the two review Sam’s life, the grand epic of the twentieth century comes sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana under the flawed morality of an abusive father. Eager to escape, Sam enlists in the army while still underage. Though the hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the United States, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam’s at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships—with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son—Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years.
Download or read book Elvis Presley Boulevard written by Mark Winegardner and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-02-27 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of a cross-country road trip, the tourist experience, and the cultural touchstones that bring Americans together: “A great story” (Publishers Weekly). As a boy in Ohio, Mark Winegardner spent the formative summers of his wonder years touring the States with his family in a succession of recreational vehicles. Much later, only months before his wedding, he undertakes another transcontinental odyssey—this time without benefit of license-plate games with his sister or parental warnings to get his feet out of the car window. He arms himself with only the bare essentials: a Styrofoam cooler; a Hawaiian shirt; enough cash for gas, blue plate specials, and the occasional knickknack; a buddy; and the buddy’s ailing ’68 Chevy Impala. Determined to extract full value from every scenic overlook, these two set out to discover America. They visit Xanadu, Foam House of Tomorrow, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee; and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the only community named after a game show. They play the Easter Island Hole at Magic Carpet Golf in Tucson. They marvel at the fourteen peacocks strolling Graceland’s lawn and at the vastness of the prairie states, “where no one speaks French or pays to park.” They collect 3-D glasses. They eat Devil Dogs. They take the amazing Miracle Photo. They discover themselves. Most amazing of all, they discover an unbroken chain of Elvis tapestries, Elvis ashtrays, Elvis T-shirt wearers, and Elvis imitators that unites this land as surely as Route 66 divides it.
Download or read book Inside Graceland written by Nancy Rooks and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2005 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you wanted a picture of the life of Elvis Presley, who better to paint it for you than someone who worked as his trusted cook and maid at Graceland? Someone whose daily tasks centered around keeping the ́King of Rock & Roll ́ happy, whose every move was designed to please the greatest music legend the entertainment world has ever known. Here is that picture, as painted by Nancy Rooks. Nancy worked for Elvis from 1967 until his untimely death in 1977. Read her stories of what those years were like, of what the routines were at Graceland, and what it meant to be close to Elvis and his family on a daily basis. Read the sad account of her rushing upstairs, after a frantic call from Ginger Alden, and finding him on the bathroom floor. This book presents that picture, one that every Elvis fan will want to see.
Download or read book Graceland written by Bethan Roberts and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if your son was the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll? From the moment she first holds him, Gladys Presley loves her son Elvis ferociously. She is the one by his side when his father is in the jailhouse; as they move from place to place skirting poverty; as Elvis’s obsession with music grows and he begins his whirlwind rise to never-before-seen success. But while he brings audiences across the land to their knees and achieves unimagined wealth and fame, there is another story – of drinking and diet pills, loneliness and loss – and at the height of his power Elvis finds that even kings must go on alone. ‘Roberts is an exceptionally tender and empathetic writer, and the story of Elvis Presley and his relationship with his mother is one ripe for her skills... both epic and intimate’ Grazia
Download or read book Bone Rosary written by Thomas Lynch and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of the very best from one of America's most thought-provoking writers: poems on life, faith, doubt, and death that read like memoir, essay, and story. As The New York Times said, "likely to resonate with many who have come face to face with life's most important questions." Thomas Lynch--like Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams--is a poet who writes about real things with language rooted in the everyday yet masterfully infused with power: I have steady work, a circle of friends and lunch on Thursdays with the Rotary. I have a wife, unspeakably beautiful, a daughter and three sons, a cat, a car, good credit, taxes, and mortgage payments and certain duties here. Notably, when folks get horizontal, breathless, still: life in Milford ends. They call. I send a car. Thomas Lynch spent his career as an undertaker in Midwest America--and in his off-hours became a writer of exceptional insight. Publishers Weekly calls him, "A poet with something to say and something worth listening to." This collection presents 140 of his greatest poems drawn from his previous books, Skating with Heather Grace, Still Life in Milford, Grimalkin, The Sin-Eater, and Walking Papers. This is a collection for readers who love all life's questions and mysteries--big and small.
Download or read book The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley written by Ted Harrison and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no other way to put it: Elvis is the King. Note the present tense: even though Elvis (supposedly) died nearly forty years ago, he has lived on in our hearts, as a sound, as an image, and as an especially vigorous personality. In fact, it’s safe to say no other celebrity has done so quite as well. The Death and Resurrection of Elvis Presley is the story of that afterlife, of Elvis after he left the building. Walking the eccentrically carpeted rooms of Graceland, bidding into stratospheric sums on his auctioned relics, and mingling among the some 200,000 impersonators of his likeness, Ted Harrison offers nothing less than the ultimate Elvis tribute. Harrison begins, of course, in pilgrimage: to Graceland. He shows how Elvis’s estate was pillaged nearly to ruin by his manager but was saved through the deft business acumen and financial vision of his divorced wife, one Priscilla Presley. If Graceland seems holy, that’s because it is: Harrison unveils in Elvis’s allure a deeply spiritual dimension, showing how Elvis fans, over the decades, have anointed their idol with Christ-like qualities. Through Elvis’s extravagance, Harrison raises fascinating links between money and faith, and through Elvis’s life, he shows how the King actually fulfilled a host of roles ranging from hero to martyr to saint. Underpinning the whole story is Elvis’s extraordinary charisma and—lest we forget—his astonishing musical genius. Fascinating, colorful, and deeply informative, this book is a must-have for any fan, anyone who was ever lucky enough to see Elvis alive or who hopes they might still be able to.
Download or read book The Last Girls written by Lee Smith and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2002-08-12 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a beautiful June day in 1965, a dozen girls-classmates at a picturesque Blue Ridge women's college-launched their homemade raft (inspired by Huck Finn's) on a trip down the Mississippi. It's Girls A-Go-Go Down the Mississippi read the headline in the Paducah, Kentucky, paper. Thirty-five years later, four of those "girls" reunite to cruise the river again. This time it's on the luxury steamboat, The Belle of Natchez, and there's no publicity. This time, when they reach New Orleans, they'll give the river the ashes of a fifth rafter-beautiful Margaret ("Baby") Ballou. Revered for her powerful female characters, here Lee Smith tells a brilliantly authoritative story of how college pals who grew up in an era when they were still called "girls" have negotiated life as "women." Harriet Holding is a hesitant teacher who has never married (she can't explain why, even to herself). Courtney Gray struggles to step away from her Southern Living-style life. Catherine Wilson, a sculptor, is suffocating in her happy third marriage. Anna Todd is a world-famous romance novelist escaping her own tragedies through her fiction. And finally there is Baby, the girl they come to bury-along with their memories of her rebellions and betrayals. THE LAST GIRLS is wonderful reading. It's also wonderfully revealing of women's lives-of the idea of romance, of the relevance of past to present, of memory and desire.
Download or read book We Are the Words written by Beth Kephart and published by . This book was released on 2021-07 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a range of provocative and personal essays, memoir writer and teacher Beth Kephart offers new ideas about locating our past, developing self-portraits, writing the other, generating telling details, refining scenes, and building obsession vessels, among other topics; considers a myriad of memoir forms and writing strategies; relates the privileges, priorities, heartaches, and hopes of the writer's life; and offers an arrangement of question cascades and exercises designed to carry readers into and through their own true stories. Kephart is a National Book Award finalist and an acclaimed memoir writer (Wife Daughter Self), an award-winning teacher of memoir at the University of Pennsylvania, a widely published essayist (Catapult, Literary Hub, The New York Times, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere), and co-founder of Juncture Workshops. More at bethkephartbooks.com.
Download or read book Graceland written by Ellen Fairey and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: Chicago's oldest cemetery is the backdrop for GRACELAND, the story of four lonely Chicagoans whose lives collide one August weekend while the Blue Angels airshow is in town. As fighter jets buzz the skies from dusk till dawn, estranged b
Download or read book Last Train To Memphis written by Peter Guralnick and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first of two volumes that make up what is arguably the definitive Elvis biography. Rich in documentary and interview material, this volume charts Elvis' early years and his rise to fame, taking us up to his departure for Germany in 1958. Of all the biographies of Elvis - this is the one you will keep coming back to.
