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Book The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years

Download or read book The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years written by Susan Cushman and published by . This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by authors about Kathy L. Murphy, The Pulpwood Queen.

Book From Cinderella to CEO

Download or read book From Cinderella to CEO written by Cary J. Broussard and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2006-02-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PRAISE FOR From CINDERELLA to CEO "The storybook Cinderella sits and waits for her prince charming to come. From Cinderella to CEO is a rewrite for modern day Cinderellas. This book tells women to climb on their own horse and ride to their destiny. It's full of great road maps on everything from how to survive a wicked boss to how to surround yourself with swans!" --Pat Schroeder, former Congresswoman, President & CEO of the Association of American Publishers "Cary Broussard has produced a great compass for women who are navigating their journey through work life. This is a primer that turns fairy tales into actionable road signs that will transform starry-eyed neophytes into seasoned professionals. This book is much more than a 'yellow brick road' map. It is an atlas that not only helps the reader plot her successful course; but, it also underscores ways for managing a successful career, as well as identifies road markers and landmines that could derail a career. It is a must read." --Esther Silver-Parker, Vice President of Diversity Relations, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. "If you have aspirations to be successful and happy in your career, then From Cinderella to CEO is the book for you! Cary Broussard has decoded folklore and articulated a play-by-play game plan to help women win in the ballgame of business. And best of all, this fairy godmentor wisely refers to cutting edge twenty-first century thinking by interpreting business as pleasure!" --Linda K. Bolliger, Founder & CEO, Boardroom Bound? "From Cinderella to CEO offers something for everyone. No matter which rung of the corporate ladder you are perched upon you will appreciate Cary J. Broussard's fresh perspective on women in the workplace. Whether you are just starting out, mentoring a new hire, or thinking about starting your own business you'll look at things differently after reading this book. Broussard understands that while work styles may vary by gender, these differences complement each other and savvy employers and employees will prosper when both styles are encouraged to flourish." --Marti Barletta, author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach, and Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market Segment

Book Circling Faith

Download or read book Circling Faith written by Wendy Reed and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2012-04-02 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Circling Faith is a collection of essays by southern women that encompasses spirituality and the experience of winding through the religiously charged environment of the American South. Mary Karr, in “Facing Altars,” describes how the consolation she found in poetry directed her to a similar solace in prayer. In “Chiaroscuro: Shimmer and Shadow,” Susan Cushman recounts how her dissatisfaction with a Presbyterian upbringing led her to hold her own worship services at home and eventually to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. “Magic” by Amy Blackmarr depicts a religious practice that occurs wholly outside of any formal setting—she recognizes places, such as a fishing shack in south Georgia, and things, such as crystal Cherokee earrings, as reminders that God exists everywhere and that a Great Comforter is always present. In “The Only Jews in Town,” Stella Suberman gives her account of growing up as a religious minority in Tennessee, connecting her story to a larger narrative of Eastern European Jews who moved away from the Northeast, often to found and run “Jew stores” in midwestern and southern towns. Alice Walker, in an interview with Valerie Reiss titled “Alice Walker Calls God ‘Mama,’” relates her dynamic relationship with her God, which includes meditation and yoga, and explains how she views the role of faith in her work, including her novel The Color Purple. These essays showcase the large spectrum of spirituality that abides in the South, as well as the equally large spectrum of individual women who hold these faiths.

Book Empty Mansions

Download or read book Empty Mansions written by Bill Dedman and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

Book Our Prince of Scribes

Download or read book Our Prince of Scribes written by Nicole Seitz and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed writers, family, friends, and more pay homage to the celebrated Southern author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini. New York Times–bestselling writer Pat Conroy (1945–2016) inspired a worldwide legion of devoted fans, but none are more loyal to him and more committed to sustaining his literary legacy than the many writers he nurtured over the course of his fifty-year career. In sharing their stories of Conroy, his fellow writers honor his memory and advance our shared understanding of his lasting impact on literary life in and well beyond the American South. Conroy’s fellowship drew from all walks of life. His relationships were complicated, and people and places he thought he’d left behind often circled back to him at crucial moments. The pantheon of contributors includes Rick Bragg, Kathleen Parker, Barbra Streisand, Janis Ian, Anthony Grooms, Mary Hood, Nikky Finney, Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart, Ron Rash, Sandra Brown, and Mary Alice Monroe; Conroy biographers Katherine Clark and Catherine Seltzer; his longtime friends; Pat’s students Sallie Ann Robinson and Valerie Sayers; members of the Conroy family; and many more. Each author in this collection shares a slightly different view of Conroy. Through their voices, a multifaceted portrait of him comes to life and sheds new light on who he was. Loosely following Conroy’s own chronology, the essays herewith wind through his river of a story, stopping at important ports of call. Cities he called home and longed to visit, along with each book he birthed, become characters that are as equally important as the people he touched along the way.

Book The Pulpwood Queens  Tiara Wearing  Book Sharing Guide to Life

Download or read book The Pulpwood Queens Tiara Wearing Book Sharing Guide to Life written by Kathy L. Murphy and published by Kathy L. Murphy Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-25 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Kathy L. Patrick lost her job as a publisher's rep, she took that lemon and made margaritas. She opened Beauty and the Book, the world's only combination beauty salon/bookstore. Soon after that whirlwind success, Kathy founded the Pulpwood Queens of East Texas, a book club that became a nationwide phenomenon almost overnight. She set out to change the world, one reader at a time.

Book River  Sing Out

    Book Details:
  • Author : James Wade
  • Publisher : Blackstone Publishing
  • Release : 2021-06-08
  • ISBN : 1982601078
  • Pages : 259 pages

Download or read book River Sing Out written by James Wade and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempting to escape his abusive father and generations of cyclical poverty, young Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River—a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth—and embarks on a southern gothic odyssey through the East Texas river bottoms. They are pursued by local drug kingpin John Curtis and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade, with whom River was romantically involved. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, as their relationship with the cartel controlling their meth supply begins to sour. Keeping tabs on everyone is the Thin Man, a silent assassin who values consequence over mercy. Each person is keeping secrets from the others—deadly secrets that will be exposed in savage fashion as their final paths collide and all are forced to come to terms with their choices, their circumstances, and their own definition of God. With a colorful cast of supporting characters and an unflinching violence juxtaposed against lyrical prose, River, Sing Out dives deep into a sinister and sanguinary world, where oppressive poverty is pitted against the need to believe in something greater than the self.

Book Rain Village

    Book Details:
  • Author : Carolyn Turgeon
  • Publisher : Unbridled Books
  • Release : 2006-11-01
  • ISBN : 1609530268
  • Pages : 338 pages

Download or read book Rain Village written by Carolyn Turgeon and published by Unbridled Books. This book was released on 2006-11-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young Tessa is a diminutive girl, far too small for farm work and the object of ridicule by both her own family and the other children in their isolated Midwestern community. Her father seems to believe in nothing beyond his crops, certainly not education for his misfit daughter. When a mysterious, entrancing librarian comes to town, full of fabulous stories, earthy wisdom and potions for the lovelorn, she takes Tessa under her wing, teaching her to read and to believe in herself—and a whole new magical world of possibilities opens up. But even as she blooms, Tessa’s father begins sexually abusing her. And her mentor carries a dark secret of her own that finally causes her to drown herself. Tessa runs off, following Mary’s footsteps, to join the circus as a trapeze artist, where she marries a loving man and finds a fulfilling life for herself amidst her new circus family. But she remains haunted by her past. And when a stranger from one of Mary’s fabulist tales shows up, Tessa risks everything to follow him to Rain Village, where she might finally discover her mentor’s tragic secret. A brilliantly evocative debut set in the early part of the 20th century, steeped in emotional turbulence and down-to-earth wisdom, where a young woman must reconcile the inner traumas from her past and learn to live in the present in order to avoid becoming prisoner to her future. Rain Village casts a fabulous spell, pulling us into a world of mystery and possibility where love, friendship and loyalty might either destroy or set one free.

Book Purple Lotus

    Book Details:
  • Author : Veena Rao
  • Publisher : She Writes Press
  • Release : 2020-09-27
  • ISBN : 1631527622
  • Pages : 309 pages

Download or read book Purple Lotus written by Veena Rao and published by She Writes Press. This book was released on 2020-09-27 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2021 WINNER, AMERICAN FICTION AWARD A 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Award Finalist Award-Winning Finalist, Women's Fiction, 2021 International Book Awards Award-Winning Finalist, Multicultural Fiction, 2021 International Book Awards Featured in Travel + Leisure’s "20 Most-anticipated Books for Fall” “20 Classic and New Books About Feminism That Will Get You Thinking and Talking” ―Parade “A moving and polished novel that highlights Rao’s literary promise.” ―Kirkus Reviews “Rao’s resonant novel is an ode to the value of personal dignity and the importance of being true to oneself that carries on long after the final chapter.” ―Newsweek magazine “Purple Lotus is the Atlanta novel you need to be reading this year… Tara is probably one of the strongest characters you’ll find in Southern fiction.” —ArtsATL “I’d recommend it to people who are fans of the expansive storytelling of Tayari Jones... and then to anyone who wants to add to their bookshelf of growing Atlanta literature.” —PANK Magazine” ” “The dazzling tale of an Indian-American woman finding her way through the labyrinth of tradition to self-awareness in the modern world. The writer employs an energetic prose style interspersed with melodic passages to make the writing itself a hybrid. Set in particular times and places, Purple Lotus nonetheless appeals to readers everywhere, especially women, to claim the full measure of their human rights. A vivid and resplendent novel for our time.” ―Elaine Neil Orr, critically acclaimed author of Swimming Between Worlds Tara moves to the American South three years after her arranged marriage to tech executive Sanjay. Ignored and lonely, Tara finds herself regressing back to childhood memories that have scarred her for life. When she was eight, her parents had left her behind with her aging grandparents and a schizophrenic uncle in Mangalore, while taking her baby brother with them to make a new life for the family in Dubai. Tara’s memories of abandonment and isolation mirror her present life of loneliness and escalating abuse at the hands of her husband. She accepts the help of kind-hearted American strangers to fight Sanjay, only to be pressured by her patriarchal family to make peace with her circumstances. Then, in a moment of truth, she discovers the importance of self-worth—a revelation that gives her the courage to break free, gently rebuild her life, and even risk being shunned by her community when she marries her childhood love, Cyrus Saldanha. Life with Cyrus is beautiful, until old fears come knocking. Ultimately, Tara must face these fears to save her relationship with Cyrus—and to confront the victim-shaming society she was raised within. Intimate and deeply moving, Purple Lotus is the story of one woman’s ascension from the dark depths of desolation toward the light of freedom.

Book Guesthouse for Ganesha

    Book Details:
  • Author : Judith Teitelman
  • Publisher : She Writes Press
  • Release : 2019-05-07
  • ISBN : 1631525220
  • Pages : 295 pages

Download or read book Guesthouse for Ganesha written by Judith Teitelman and published by She Writes Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gold Award in the Regional Fiction (Europe) category of the 2020 IPPY Awards Gold Medal in the Fiction–Literary category of the 2020 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards Silver Award in the Audiobook: Fiction category of the 2020 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards “Teitelman paints an intensely beautiful world in which different cultures merge in surprising ways. . . . A rich and moving story about an unlikely pair.” —Kirkus Reviews In 1923, seventeen-year-old Esther Grünspan arrives in Köln “with a hardened heart as her sole luggage.” Thus begins a twenty-two-year journey, woven against the backdrops of the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the “Age of Darkness” when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her Jewish heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Esther’s traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God worshipped by millions for his abilities to destroy obstacles, bestow wishes, and avenge evils. Impressed by Esther’s fortitude and relentless determination, born of her deep—though unconscious—understanding of the meaning and purpose of love, Ganesha, with compassion, insight, and poetry, chooses to highlight her story because he recognizes it is all of our stories—for truth resides at the essence of its telling. Weaving Eastern beliefs and perspectives with Western realities and pragmatism, Guesthouse for Ganesha is a tale of love, loss, and spirit reclaimed.

Book South of Broad

    Book Details:
  • Author : Pat Conroy
  • Publisher : Dial Press
  • Release : 2009-08-11
  • ISBN : 0385532148
  • Pages : 546 pages

Download or read book South of Broad written by Pat Conroy and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2009-08-11 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage” (The Washington Post) by the celebrated author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini Leopold Bloom King has been raised in a family shattered—and shadowed—by tragedy. Lonely and adrift, he searches for something to sustain him and finds it among a tightly knit group of outsiders. Surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, as well as Charleston, South Carolina’s dark legacy of racism and class divisions, these friends will endure until a final test forces them to face something none of them are prepared for. Spanning two turbulent decades, South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest: a masterpiece from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. Praise for South of Broad “Vintage Pat Conroy . . . a big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage.”—The Washington Post “Conroy remains a magician of the page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Richly imagined . . . These characters are gallant in the grand old-fashioned sense, devoted to one another and to home. That siren song of place has never sounded so sweet.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune “A lavish, no-holds-barred performance.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A lovely, often thrilling story.”—The Dallas Morning News “A pleasure to read . . . a must for Conroy’s fans.”—Associated Press

Book Goodbye  Orchid

    Book Details:
  • Author : Carol Van Den Hende
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2020-10
  • ISBN : 9781646631889
  • Pages : 280 pages

Download or read book Goodbye Orchid written by Carol Van Den Hende and published by . This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rising from ashes is hard. Giving up the one you love is harder. Thirty-two year-old Phoenix Walker is an entrepreneur who has built an agency with a heart almost as big as his own. To add to his good fortune, he's falling for Orchid Paige, the beautiful half-Asian marketer who's collaborated with him on a winning military campaign. Until an accident changes him forever. Now, he's faced with the hardest decision of his life. Does he burden the woman whose traumatic childhood makes him feel protective of her? Or does true love mean leaving her without explaining why?

Book Market Street Madam

    Book Details:
  • Author : Randi Samuelson-Brown
  • Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
  • Release : 2021-04-02
  • ISBN : 1493058754
  • Pages : 321 pages

Download or read book Market Street Madam written by Randi Samuelson-Brown and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-04-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Market Street Madam tells the story of Annie Ryan, a woman who is running a second-rate brothel in 1890s Denver with an eye toward expansion. By chance she encounters Lydia Chambers, a society woman suffering from a laudanum habit and a bad marriage, who owns a prized property on the infamous Market Street. Annie's fortunes at the brothel turn on her niece Pearl, a pretty young girl swept up in Denver's underworld of jealousy, booze, and vice--until murder stalks the good-time girls and puts everyone's future in doubt. A rollicking tale of blurred lines, flowing booze, played-out miners and upstairs girls, Market Street Madam delivers a compelling look at the intrigues of the Wild West, where women were enterprising and justice could be had . . . for a price.

Book Untethered

Download or read book Untethered written by Laura Whitfield and published by She Writes Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Laura Whitfield was fourteen, her extraordinary brother, Lawrence, was killed in a mountain climbing accident. That night she had an epiphany: Life is short. Dream big, even if it means taking risks. So, after graduating from high school, she set out on her own, prepared to do just that. Laura spent her first summer after high school on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a magical few months filled with friendships, boys, and beer. There she met a handsome DJ who everyone called “Steve the Dream,” and risked her heart. When September came, Steve moved to New York City to become a model —prompting Laura to start thinking about modeling, too. After just one semester of college, still seeking to fill the void left by her brother’s death, she dropped out and moved to New York to become a cover girl. But while juggling the demands of life in the big city—waiting tables, failed relationships, and the cutthroat world of modeling—she lost her way. A stirring memoir about a young woman’s quest to find hope and stability after devastating loss, Untethered is Laura’s story of overcoming shame, embracing faith, and learning that taking risks—and failing—can lead to a bigger life than you've ever dared to imagine.

Book One Good Mama Bone

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bren McClain
  • Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
  • Release : 2017-02-14
  • ISBN : 1611177472
  • Pages : 273 pages

Download or read book One Good Mama Bone written by Bren McClain and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mama cow’s devotion to her calf provides lessons in motherhood to a poor Southern woman in this novel of family, survival, and human-animal bonds. South Carolina, 1950s. Homemaker Sarah Creamer has been left to care for young Emerson Bridge, the product of an affair between Sarah’s husband and her best friend. But beyond the deep wound of their betrayal, Sarah is daunted by the prophecy of her mother’s words, seared in her memory since childhood: “You ain’t got you one good mama bone in you, girl.” When Sarah finds Emerson a steer to compete at an upcoming cattle show, the young calf cries in distress on her farm. Miles away, his mother breaks out of a barbed-wire fence to find him. When Sarah finds the young steer contently nursing a large cow, her education in motherhood begins. But Luther Dobbins is desperate to regain his championship cattle dynasty, and he will stop at nothing to win. Emboldened by her budding mama bone, Sarah is committed to victory even after she learns the winning steer’s ultimate fate. Will she too stop at nothing, even if it means betraying her teacher? One Good Mama Bone explores the strengths and limitations of parental love and the ethical dilemmas of raising animals for food.

Book Navigating Colonial Orders

Download or read book Navigating Colonial Orders written by Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norwegians in colonial Africa and Oceania had varying aspirations and adapted in different ways to changing social, political and geographical circumstances in foreign, colonial settings. They included Norwegian shipowners, captains, and diplomats; traders and whalers along the African coast and in Antarctica; large-scale plantation owners in Mozambique and Hawai’i; big business men in South Africa; jacks of all trades in the Solomon Islands; timber merchants on Zanzibar’ coffee farmers in Kenya; and King Leopold’s footmen in Congo. This collection reveals narratives of the colonial era that are often ignored or obscured by the national histories of former colonial powers. It charts the entrepreneurial routes chosen by various Norwegians and the places they ventured, while demonstrating the importance of recognizing the complicity of such “non-colonial colonials” for understanding the complexity of colonial history.

Book The Cicada Tree

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robert Gwaltney
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2022-01-14
  • ISBN : 9781952439247
  • Pages : 334 pages

Download or read book The Cicada Tree written by Robert Gwaltney and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-14 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHEN AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD, WHISKY DRINKING, PIANO PRODIGY ENCOUNTERS A WEALTHY FAMILY POSSESSING SUPERNATURAL BEAUTY, HER ENSUING OBSESSION UNLEASHES FAMILY SECRETS AND A CATACLYSMIC PLAGUE OF CICADAS. The summer of 1956, a brood of cicadas descends upon Providence, Georgia, a natural event with supernatural repercussions, unhinging the life of Analeise Newell, an eleven-year-old piano prodigy. Amidst this emergence, dark obsessions are stirred, uncanny gifts provoked, and secrets unearthed. During a visit to Mistletoe, a plantation owned by the wealthy Mayfield family, Analeise encounters Cordelia Mayfield and her daughter Marlissa, both of whom possess an otherworldly beauty, a lineal trait regarded as that Mayfield Shine. A whisper and an act of violence perpetrated during this visit by Mrs. Mayfield all converge to kindle Analeise's fascination with the Mayfields. Analeise's burgeoning obsession with the Mayfield family overshadows her own seemingly, ordinary life, culminating in dangerous games and manipulation, setting off a chain of cataclysmic events with life-altering consequences-all of it unfolding to the maddening whir of a cicada song. When an eleven year old, whisky drinking, piano prodigy encounters a wealthy family possessing supernatural beauty, her ensuing obsession unleashes family secrets and a cataclysmic plague of cicadas. "Following in the magnificent footsteps of Carson McCullers and Harper Lee, Robert Gwaltney creates a wonderful snapshot of the friendship that forms between Analeise and Etta Mae, two eleven-year-old girls in '50s small town Georgia... This is a book to love and remember, and every book club in America would be wise to snap it up."- Robert Goolrick, #1 New York Times bestselling author  "The gothic beauty of a relentless Georgia summer is brought to life through Gwaltney's deliberate details and exquisite imagery, while all the while evil lurks beneath the surface; from where or what the reader does not know but is as convinced by Gwaltney's expert storytelling as he is."-Zoe Fishman, bestselling author of Invisible Air and Georgia Author of the Year 2020 "Gwaltney's Southern Gothic, THE CICADA TREE mesmerizes and seduces, the language redolent and deadly, the characters steeped in secrets and madness, and the whole of it an enthralling and perfect read. Easily my favorite book of the year."-Kim Taylor Blakemore, bestselling author of After Alice Fell