Book picks similar to
The Least One by Borden Deal


american-south
classics
public-library
coming-of-age

Jim the Boy


Tony Earley - 2000
    in 2000. It details a year in the life of Jim Glass, who lives, with his mother and three uncles, in the small fictional town of Aliceville, North Carolina in 1934 during the Great Depression.

Paper Moon


Joe David Brown - 1971
    Set in the darkest days of the Great Depression, this is the timeless story of an 11-year-old orphan’s rollicking journey through the Deep South with a con man who just might be her father. Brimming with humor, pathos, and an irresistible narrative energy, this is American storytelling at its finest. Paper Moon is tough, vibrant, and ripe for rediscovery.

Eyes of the Hawk


Elmer Kelton - 1981
    Eyes of the Hawk, winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Novel, is an outstanding tale of Texas--filled with authentic characters and history, and telling the story of the outstanding courage and determination of the men and women who challenged an unyielding wilderness to build a frontier legend.Thomas Canfield descends from a line of Texas's earliest settlers. A proud man with a fierce-eyes stare, he inspires the Mexican of Stonehill, Texas to call him el gavilan--the "hawk". When Branch Isom--an insolent, dangerous newcomer--seeks to build his fortune at Canfeild's expense, an all-out feud ensues. Hurtling the town toward a day of reckoning that will shake the entire town to its very roots. Eyes of the Hawk is a classic tale of Western history, told by one of the most critically acclaimed writers of the American West.

Into the Free


Julie Cantrell - 2012
    But she’s the only one strong enough to break the family cycle.In Depression-era Mississippi, Millie Reynolds longs to escape the madness that marks her world. With an abusive father and a “nothing mama,” she struggles to find a place where she really belongs. For answers,Millie turns to the Gypsies who caravan through town each spring. The travelers lead Millie to a key that unlocks generations of shocking family secrets. When tragedy strikes, the mysterious contents of the box give Millie the tools she needs to break her family’s longstanding cycle of madness and abuse. Through it all, Millie experiences the thrill of first love while fighting to trust the God she believes has abandoned her. With the power of forgiveness, can Millie finally make her way into the free?Saturated in Southern ambiance and written in the vein of other Southern literary bestsellers like The Help by Kathryn Stockett and CrookedLetter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, Julie Cantrell has created Into theFree—now a New York Times bestseller—a story that will sweep you away long after the novel ends.

A Cry of Angels


Jeff Fields - 1974
    In the slum known as the Ape Yard, hope's last refuge is a boardinghouse where a handful of residents dream of a better life. Earl Whitaker, who is white, and Tio Grant, who is black, are both teenagers, both orphans, and best friends. In the same house live two of the most important adults in the boys' lives: Em Jojohn, the gigantic Lumbee Indian handyman, is notorious for his binges, his rat-catching prowess, and his mysterious departures from town. Jayell Crooms, a gifted but rebellious architect, is stuck in a loveless marriage to a conventional woman intent on climbing the social ladder.Crooms's vision of a new Ape Yard, rebuilt by its own residents, unites the four-and puts them on a collision course with Doc Bobo, a smalltown Machiavelli who rules the community like a feudal lord. Jeff Fields's exuberantly defined characters and his firmly rooted sense of place have earned A Cry of Angels an intensely loyal following. Its republication, more than three decades since it first appeared, is cause for celebration.

Go Set a Watchman


Harper Lee - 2015
    Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—"Scout"—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience. Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision—a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.

Born a Colored Girl


Michael Edwin Q. - 2017
    From her mother's diary, Etta Jean will learn to love the mother she never knew. And from the same diary, a mother will finally give of herself.

The Sheriff's Son


William MacLeod Raine - 1917
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Sunshine After Rain


Dee Williams - 2005
    But their happy world is shattered when, in 1912, William takes a trip to America that ends in tragedy.

God's Little Acre


Erskine Caldwell - 1933
    Exhorted by their patriarch Ty Ty, the Waldens ruin their land by digging it up in search of gold. Complex sexual entanglements and betrayals lead to a murder within the family that completes its dissolution. Juxtaposed against the Waldens' obsessive search is the story of Ty Ty's son-in-law, a cotton mill worker in a nearby town who is killed during a strike.First published in 1933, God's Little Acre was censured by the Georgia Literary Commission, banned in Boston, and once led the all-time best-seller list, with more than ten million copies in print.

Veda: A Novel


Ellen Gardner - 2013
    It’s the Great Depression and jobs are scarce, but it seems to Veda that Raymond uses religion as an excuse for why he can’t find work. He can’t work on the Sabbath, he can’t work around crude or vulgar men, and he will not join a union. After years of financial hardship, four babies, and what Raymond calls "Veda's accident”, Veda defies her church and files for divorce. The mysterious loss of her second husband is devastating and in order to raise her kids, she does things she is not proud of. Over the years she has blamed the church, Raymond, fate, and herself for her troubles, but it is Charlie’s recklessness that swallows up every bit of pride she has left.

V for Victor


Mark Childress - 1988
    The war is everywhere, but Victor--a sixteen-year old boy sent by his father to care for his dying grandmother on a lonely island in Mobile Bay--can only dream of it. Then he wakes one amazing night to a thunderous roar from the Bay, and watches as a thug burns his boat. He also discovers a decomposing corpse, witnesses a near-seduction . . . and sees the ominous shadow of an enemy submarine surfacing at night.Suddenly Victor is playing unforeseen roles--now hostage, now pursuer--in the perilous war at home. . . .

Charms for the Easy Life


Kaye Gibbons - 1993
    Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.Sophia, Margaret, and Charlie Kate find strength in a time when women almost always depended on men, and their bond deepens as each one experiences love and loss during World War II. Charms for the Easy Life is a passionate, luminous, and exhilarating story about embracing what life has to offer, even if it means finding it in unconventional ways.

Other Voices, Other Rooms


Truman Capote - 1948
    In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.Fueled by a world-weariness that belied Capote’s tender age, this novel tempers its themes of waylaid hopes and lost innocence with an appreciation for small pleasures and the colorful language of its time and place.This new edition, featuring an enlightening Introduction by John Berendt, offers readers a fresh look at Capote’s emerging brilliance as a writer of protean power and effortless grace.From the Hardcover edition.

Cold Sassy Tree


Olive Ann Burns - 1984
    Rucker Blakeslee, elopes with Miss Love Simpson. He is barely three weeks a widower, and she is only half his age and a Yankee to boot. As their marriage inspires a whirlwind of local gossip, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a family scandal, and that’s where his adventures begin.Cold Sassy Tree is the undeniably entertaining and extraordinarily moving account of small-town Southern life in a bygone era. Brimming with characters who are wise and loony, unimpeachably pious and deliciously irreverent, Olive Ann Burns’s classic bestseller is a timeless, funny, and resplendent treasure.