Best of
Southern

1988

Fair and Tender Ladies


Lee Smith - 1988
    Ivy's talent as a budding writer is recognized early on, but just as she is about to realize her dream of going north to school, she is betrayed by her passionate nature. Facing an unwed pregnancy and publicly admonished for her sins, Ivy marries a childhood friend who takes her back to the family homestead, where she bears several children and endures the endless toil of a farmer's wife. Through her trials Ivy holds firm, knowing that her life will hold happiness one day.

Trash: Stories


Dorothy Allison - 1988
    The limitless scope of human emotion and experience are depicted in stories that give aching and eloquent voice to the terrible wounds we inflict on those closest to us. These are tales of loss and redemption; of shame and forgiveness; of love and abuse and the healing power of storytelling. A book that resonates with uncompromising candor and incandescence, Trash is sure to captivate Allison's legion of readers and win her a devoted new following.

Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes


Lewis Grizzard - 1988
    He tells us why Junior Leaguers don't do it in groups, why Baptists won't do it standing up, and why Richard Nixon never did it, among other things. From the Paperback edition.

The Anna Papers


Ellen Gilchrist - 1988
    Her sister Helen reading her papers as executor is first aghast, then exultant and liberated by her sister's legacy.

Go Tell it on the Mountain / Giovanni's Room / The Fire Next Time


James Baldwin - 1988
    

White Trash Cooking II: Recipes for Gatherins


Ernest Matthew Mickler - 1988
    Tooler Doolus’s Oven Spaghetti and Bobbie’s Lemon/Lime Jell-O Cake Supreme, Ernie Mickler has collected another whopping batch of the“most magnannygoshus” recipes of the Very Deepest South. Previously known as SINKIN SPELLS, HOT FLASHES, FITS AND CRAVINS, this collection has a new name and a new cover that calls to mind its best-selling brother, WHITE TRASH COOKING. Same good eatin’, though. With color photographs by the author.

Lee Bailey's Country Desserts


Lee Bailey - 1988
    Included are: His grandmother's favorite Peppermint Candy Ice CreamHis Aunt Cora's Banana Layer CakeSpecial Sauces like Rum-Butter Sauce and Praline SauceSpecial Coffee and Teatime favoritesDivinities and Brittles and old-fashioned ShortbreadApplejack IceBlueberry Brown Betty

The Passing: Stories


Ferrol Sams - 1988
    Now the stories alone are available for the first time in trade paperback.

Wild to the Heart


Rick Bass - 1988
    On long weekends, in his Volkswagen Rabbit, he drives away from Jackson, Mississippi, and the job that confines him. His excursions which take him to southern rivers, southern swamps, and sometimes to conservation meetings also lead to musings about his favorite mountains, grizzly bears, and the wildness in all of us.

The Knockout Artist


Harry Crews - 1988
    "A brilliant specialist in black humor, Crews delivers the goods once again. . . uncannily effective."--Publishers Weekly

Deep Enough for Ivorybills


James Kilgo - 1988
    Portraying a world both visceral and majestic, Deep Enough for Ivorybills establishes Kilgo not only in the sporting lineage of Robert Ruark and William Faulkner but also in the naturalist tradition of Annie Dillard and Loren Eisley.

Southern by the Grace of God


Michael Andrew Grissom - 1988
    And now comes a book that reminds us of the glory of being Southern! Just when you thought the liberal press had succeeded in grinding us into the ground with their barrage of derogatory patter, a glimmer of hope emerges, and Southerners are once again discovering that being Southern is a good thing after all-just like it used to be!If you are proud of your Southern heritage, you'll rejoice in Southern by the Grace of God. Many of us are proud to be Southern, but we don't know just why. Since Southern history has been purged from the textbooks that children study today, our youth have little conception of a heritage. Even some of us that are older are not well grounded in it either. The author has gathered together the elements of our heritage and gives us a short course in our splendid legacy. It could be called a "handbook for Southerners." The entire South is reflected in this work, from Oklahoma to Virginia, from Texas to Florida. There is no other book like it on the market today . Some features you'll find: * Biographical Sketches and Photos of Seven Confederate Heroes * A Section on Southern Folklore * 200 Old Photographs from 1853 through 1919 * A Humorous Southern Dictionary for Helping Yankees Better Understand Us * A Chapter about the War Between the States * A Genealogical Bonanza * The Real Story of Reconstruction * A Look at Why Southerners Are Special * Recommended Reading List

The Long Night


Andrew Lytle - 1988
    Originally published in 1936, the book is based on a true story related to Lytle by one of his close friends and colleagues at Vanderbilt University, Frank L. Owsley, who later became the chairman of The University of Alabama Department of History. In fact, the novel opens with a letter to Professor Owsley from the author, and Owsley’s son has written the introduction to this edition. As described by George B. Tindall, The Long Night is “the episodic story of a young Alabamian beset by the moral dilemma of desire for revenge against the persecutors of his father and his larger duty in the war, a story that rose to its climax in the Battle of Shiloh.” The work is rich in its description of the land and people of Black-Belt Alabama during the mid-19th century.

A Serigamy of Stories


Kathryn Tucker Windham - 1988
    Windham, who frequently participates in oral storytelling sessions around the country, grew up in a small Alabama town in the early part of this century. She was surrounded by offbeat adults in those years, among them a doughty aunt, who was the town's formidable postmistress, and a circuit-riding Baptist-preacher grandfather. They were fodder for legends within the family, as well as story-creators themselves. As Windham weaves her memories there are digressions into tales that mark the castes of a bygone South, tales that move in slow cadence and bring to life a family that accommodated all members in their entertaining oddities. The word "serigamy" is, according to the author, a family coinage, used through the generations to indicate "a goodly number," and the word aptly applies as well to this charming retrospective.

Old Louisiana


Lyle Saxon - 1988
    This fascinating volume covers Louisiana's history, beginning with the early French and Spanish settlers through slavery and beyond.

Whores


James Crumley - 1988
    This book contains James Crumley's collected short fiction, non-fiction and a long interview conducted by New Yorker writers Bryan Di Salvatore and Deidre McNamer.

Can't Quit You, Baby (Contemporary American Fiction)


Ellen Douglas - 1988
    Cornelia is rich, white, and pampered, the mistress of the house, who oversees a seemingly perfect world of smooth surfaces and stubborn silence. Tweet, her housekeeper, is a poor, black, world-weary woman with a ghost-ridden past. As the years go by, Cornelia and Tweet each endure moments of uncertainty and despair; each, in her time of need, is rescued by the other.In the footsteps of Southern writers like Peter Taylor, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor, Ellen Douglas celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit in this story of two women bound by transgression and guilt, memory and illusion, gratitude and love."Ellen Douglas is not just one of our best Southern novelists. She is one of our best American novelists." - The New York Times Book Review