The Southern Mirror: Stories and Reflections on Life in the South by Brenda Gantt

 

Brenda Gantt has made quite a name for herself on social media for her cooking videos.  People just couldn’t get enough of her downhome, folksy ways and delicious recipes.  Three popular cookbooks followed.

Her new book also has recipes but the subtitle really says it all: it’s more about the Southern way of life.  She tells stories about her childhood: Christmas and Sunday dinner at granny’s; offers her own thoughts on various subjects like being a collector or letting children play in the dirt; and helpful tips on gardening, flower arranging and decorating.  She’s also an avid collector and I loved the photos of her Christmas postcard collection. She also has some craft ideas as well, including a brooch tree—a lovely way to use old but memorable jewelry in an attractive fashion.

The book is divided up into several sections, including:

 

Southern Tales

Entertaining & Gathering

Around the House

Holiday Memories & More

A Lifetime of Collections

Alabama the Beautiful

A Look to the Future

 

All these things are presented with gorgeous photos.  It’s a great browsing book, though I have to say it’s a bit on the large side: it’s described as a coffee-table book, and that’s no exaggeration.  This is a book meant to be placed on a table and leafed through, enjoying the colorful and cheerful photos while reading Mrs. Brenda’s text. 

Of course as mentioned before there are some recipes thrown in (with mouth-watering photos!) but this is more a love letter to her fans.  The editor’s note at the end says this book is a way for Mrs. Brenda to continue teaching and encouraging.

A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

This is a collection of three of Truman Capote’s short stories, although they draw heavily on Capote’s own childhood for inspiration.  It’s a mix of autobiography and fiction, just as his most famous work In Cold Blood is a “non-fiction novel.”

Whether you take them as truth or fiction, Capote gets to deliver a lot of emotional truths in these stories.  In “A Christmas Memory,” he and Sook, the elderly cousin who is his best friend, set out to make their annual gifts of fruitcakes for people.  Not just family, but for President Roosevelt, for the postman, for anyone they feel merits a fruitcake. They save their money all year long to buy what they need to finish the cakes.  It’s a beautifully wrought story, filled with all the details to make it come alive and to make the reader recall his or her own childhood Christmases—not the toys so much but the excitement, the giving, and the wonderful secrets and surprises.

The second story, “One Christmas,” has the young narrator being sent to visit his father for the holiday.  The man is largely a stranger, since he and the boy’s mother divorced when the child was two, and he lives in the city of New Orleans.  The boy has grown up with his mother’s relations in rural Alabama so the city is quite a shock.  Frightened, a bit angry, and lonely for Sook, the child does all he can to make the visit a short one. His observations, now filtered from an adult perspective, are both poignant and pointed.

Finally, “The Thanksgiving Visitor” tells the story of a bully who made the boy’s life a misery growing up.  Things come to head when Sook invited the bully to Thanksgiving dinner, and valuable lessons are learned.

This isn’t to say that any of the stories are in the least preachy or sanctimonious.  The emotions they evoke are always relatable, sharply observed, and they resonate with the reader.

All these stories are finely crafted and memorable, no matter the season.

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

Reviewed by Kristin

New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson delivers an origin story worthy of a superhero, as well as a tiny bundle of cells rapidly dividing and multiplying in an epic quest to become that most miraculous of beings: a new human.

Leia Birch Briggs is a graphic novel artist who had a huge success with Violence in Violet, or V in V, a comic which grew out of sketches she began two decades ago.  At first a minor work, V in V exploded in popularity when Leia uploaded a few pages onto her website.  Suddenly a bit of a rock star in the comic world, Leia is offered a deal to write a prequel.  She is struggling to write her character’s beginnings when she has a one night stand at a Comic Con with Batman; or that is, someone cosplaying Batman.

What better than an unplanned pregnancy to throw a knot into the somewhat structured life of a 38-year-old self-employed artist?  And just to add another facet to the situation, Leia is white and Batman is black.

Leia is also blindsided by a call home to Alabama to help Birchie, her grandmother who has suddenly shown signs of dementia—unfortunately in full view of half the town in church one Sunday morning.  In fact, Leia’s phone is blowing up with messages and calls before the pews have emptied.  Birchie needs care, more than her comparably aged African American maid/friend/companion Wattie can provide.

As Leia attempts to care for her grandmother and decide if she will reach out to her Caped Crusader, old bones and racial differences in the Deep South emerge in a way that will change her life and the lives of her family forever.

What I love about Joshilyn Jackson’s books is that they are full of imperfect people who usually manage to find some measure of redemption and grace.  Her characters feel very real: so much like someone who we might know at church, at work, down at the corner market, or maybe even a little closer to home.  Sometimes Jackson’s stories make wild twists and turns but I love being along for the ride.

Jackson puts her heart and soul into each novel she publishes.  The Almost Sisters is even closer to her family than most of the others.  She is a Southerner (with a capital S) through and through, and explores the meaning of family in every thread of her writing.  For a special peek into what Jackson has shared with her readers, check out this article in the Atlanta JournalConstitution.