Best of
Southern

1976

The Great Santini


Pat Conroy - 1976
    He's all Marine --- fighter pilot, king of the clouds, and absolute ruler of his family. Lillian is his wife -- beautiful, southern-bred, with a core of velvet steel. Without her cool head, her kids would be in real trouble. Ben is the oldest, a born athlete whose best never satisfies the big man. Ben's got to stand up, even fight back, against a father who doesn't give in -- not to his men, not to his wife, and certainly not to his son. Bull Meecham is undoubtedly Pat Conroy's most explosive character -- a man you should hate, but a man you will love.

A Feast of Snakes


Harry Crews - 1976
    "No number of adjectives in the thesaurus can do full justice to the dazzlingly bizarre nature of Crews' creations".--"Washington Post Book World".

The Year the Lights Came on


Terry Kay - 1976
    Revolving around the electrification of rural northeast Georgia shortly after the end of World War II, the novel has become a classic coming-of-age story. Kay, now an acclaimed writer with an international following, has reread the novel with the eyes of a seasoned storyteller. Cutting here and adding there, Kay has enriched an already highly comical and poignant work. The Year the Lights Came On is ready to find its place in the hearts of a new generation.

Pattern of a Man & Other Stories


James Still - 1976
    First published in 1976, with a 2001 afterword by Wendell Berry. James Still was born on Double Creek in Alabama, one of ten children. For most of his life he lived in a log house at the forks of Troublesome and Wolfpen creeks in Knott County, Kentucky. The unique native dialect of the Kentucky mountains informs the language of all his stories. "Not many writers have been able to concentrate so much power into a few pages. When you look up from `The Nest' or `The Scrape, ' you find the room filled with afterimages...Because, perhaps, of its artistic integrity this body of work never exploits or condescends to its subject, a region that has been condescended to and exploited almost by convention"--Wendell Berry

The Rocks Begin to Speak


LaVan Martineau - 1976
    Unlocks the secrets of petroglyphs and pictographs, and opens the door to an understanding of prehistoric man.