Assorted tales and contemplations that inspire as often as they entertain.
A Tennessee judge reflects on family life and braves dystopian futures in a collection that blends memoir and speculative fiction.
Swann, the author of Politics, Faith, Love(2017), divides his book into three distinct parts. The first is a series of what-if scenarios; Bill Kirksey, the author’s alter ego, wakes up on different mornings to a staggering loss—on one morning, he’s lost his sense of hearing; on another, there’s no electricity. In each story, the losses affect everyone in the world, and Kirksey, his wife, and their grown children must adjust to the new normal in Gatlinburg. The most imaginative tale of the bunch, in which people pick up teleportation skills, is disappointingly brief. The book’s second section centers primarily on Kirksey’s past and particularly his home life. These warm, charming stories include one in which he learns that his mother’s preference for dark chicken meat and gizzards was only because she knew her other family members liked the other parts of the bird better. The final, nonfictional section, which takes up more than half the book, collects a hodgepodge of first-person musings, poetry, and tales of Swann’s days on the judicial bench. In this part, the author sometimes relies too heavily on secondary material, such as identical biblical verses in different translations and lengthy court documents. Nevertheless, the author’s prose style is buoyant and memorable: “He could remember how the power line outside his fifth-grade window had stacked up with snow, right on the wire, an ever-mounting knife-edge of snow, thin as the wire itself.” Although he delivers his life stories with fond nostalgia, he’s also occasionally playful; one piece, for instance, is essentially a list of words and phrases in East Tennessee dialect, which he helpfully translates. Overall, the book is endlessly upbeat, spotlighting a “pretty decent” depiction of humankind as well as Swann’s steadfast positivity.
Assorted tales and contemplations that inspire as often as they entertain.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982261-69-6
Page Count: 210
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fast-paced and boisterously readable assemblage of true stories.
A memoir offers vignettes from an entire lifetime.
In his latest work of nonfiction, Binder looks back on his life and renders several incidents and themes in a series of autobiographical stories. The author has led a picaresque life, with many adventures and crises, and he’s inserted many of these escapades into the entertaining, touching, and often enlightening tales arranged in these pages. He takes readers back to his childhood, painting affectionate portraits of the many people who influenced him while he was growing up. Binder includes a particularly memorable remembrance of his mother, who was felled by a serious stroke that robbed her of her speech (“Visiting her in the human warehouse they call a hospital, I’d point to letters of the alphabet printed on a card and she would blink to spell the word she wanted to convey”). He also gives readers a captivating, behind-the-scenes look at the famous child evangelist Marjoe Gortner. Binder worked on the crew that produced the Academy Award–winning 1972 documentary about Gortner’s illusion-dispelling revival tour, in which he exposed the deceits of his childhood ministry. The author watched all of this up close and relates it with enthusiasm and sympathy. (Sometimes a touch too much sympathy, since at one point even Binder seems convinced by the enthusiasm of the crowd: “I don’t believe in magic, nor do I believe in God, but I do believe in miracles. I witnessed one.”) Whether he’s recalling partying with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson in Las Brisas, Texas, or recounting the fracas he and his partner got into in 1966 at the Albany Convention Center when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was speaking (“Reporters grabbed at our feet trying to trip us up and bring us down. They failed. I was exhilarated”), the author has clearly told most of these tales many times in his life. These written versions are fine-tuned to perfection and provide a large and constantly moving banquet of intriguing moments.
A fast-paced and boisterously readable assemblage of true stories.Pub Date: March 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9998695-5-0
Page Count: 363
Publisher: F-Stop Books
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poet/photographer deftly makes Idaho look—and sound—like heaven.
A collection offers photographs and devotional verse.
The images are the real stars of this elegant volume. Moseley’s photos of North Idaho will make readers who have never been to the region feel like they have been missing out. On one level, her book is a visual love letter to her home state. In it are dozens of pictures of the Western landscape rendered in gorgeous detail. If these images are any indication, Idaho’s natural beauties are just stunning. The state’s skies are breathtaking, its waterways lucent, its foliage lush, and its snowscapes pristine. Those who have tried their hands at nature photography know it’s not for amateurs, and Moseley is a real pro. Her photos are crisp, colorful, and expertly framed. But the pictures are not the only gift she has for her readers. Mixed among them are swatches of lucid, moving poetry. Sometimes these poems are barely a few lines. A jaw-dropping shot of a double rainbow is accompanied by a humble quatrain: “Late afternoon Spring storms / adorn radiant skies with / wreaths of glistening rainbows / shimmering in the distant horizon.” Other poems, like “The Road Beyond,” stretch on to multiple pages. That piece ends: “Not once has He left me to travel alone / Through the bends, shadows, or strife / I wait for His hand to show me the way / No never alone on this road, my life.” The “He” here is God, and the natural world is enduring proof of the Lord’s benevolence and love. In this, the poet follows the great Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” For Moseley, as for Hopkins, people can look to nature for evidence of God’s enduring presence, and her book is a touching testament to that belief.
A poet/photographer deftly makes Idaho look—and sound—like heaven.Pub Date: April 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-973688-26-6
Page Count: 104
Publisher: WestBowPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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