Fred Sauceman and the Food of Appalachia

 

An Appreciation by Jeanne

 

I can’t remember exactly when I became aware of Fred Sauceman.  My best guess is that it was in 2009, when his video Red Hot Dog Digest was added to the library’s collection.  I had never realized that the red hot dog was unusual: growing up, I thought all hot dogs were red.  In that video, Sauceman introduces the audience to some iconic local hot dog vendors, including Bristol’s Corner Dog House and Marion’s Dip Dog. 

From there I moved on to reading some of his Place Setting books.  There are three volumes, and each one has stories of Appalachian food and its makers. Pepperoni rolls, ham biscuits, pimento cheese, and more foods take center stage in his stories of places and people.  I delighted in reading about the places I knew and enjoyed learning of those new to me. He moved a bit farther afield in the wonderful Buttermilk and Bible Burgers: More Stories from the Kitchens of Appalachia, which includes entries from Alabama and Pennsylvania.

Since then, I’ve also seen two other short films, Beans All the Way (about the Bean Barn in Greeneville) and Smoke in the Holler, about Ridgewood Barbecue.  He has also written a book entitled The Proffitts of Ridgewood which recounts the story of the restaurant and the family behind it.  Inspired by the book, I made my first trip to Ridgewood and took family members who had never heard of the place.  We were wondering if we were lost at first, and then we started seeing cars parked along the road, some almost in the ditch.

If you’re interested in local food and local food traditions, by all means check out a book or watch a video by Fred Sauceman!

Community Board by Tara Conklin

 

Reviewed by Kristin

At the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Darcy Clipper hits a roadblock. Or rather, her husband Skip throws a roadblock directly at her head by telling her that he is leaving her for Bianca, a skydiver. Darcy tries to continue her routine of commuting to her job as an actuary at an insurance agency outside of Boston, but the weeping gets in the way. When her boss Mr. Castro offers her a six-month sabbatical to recover, Darcy thinks about it for three or four seconds before accepting.

Darcy sublets the apartment and goes home to her parents. A few hours later she arrives in Murbridge, where she is startled to find the house silent, her favorite fern “Fred” missing, and her parents in Arizona. Oh sorry Darcy, they say, we just wanted to see if like this retirement community before telling you our intentions. Yes, dear, feel free to stay, we won’t sell the house immediately…

Darcy holes up in the house with its abundant supply of canned emergency rations and becomes something of a hermit. Neighbor Mrs. Pevzner leaves blondies on the front porch, but does seem to get a little cranky when Darcy doesn’t immediately return her Tupperware. Darcy doesn’t have the emotional energy to engage with anyone face to face, not even for more sweet treats.

Murbridge has changed, obviously, and Darcy really misses Fred. But now she can find all she needs to know on the local online community board. Small town living at its finest, now with high speed internet.

Darcy’s anxiety and depression do not hamper the story, but rather show her to be a real person driven to somewhat extreme circumstances as she decides how and when to re-enter the outside world. Darcy does make some connections. When her stock of canned food grows low and she needs money to buy more meals, she discovers she’s excellent at finding lost pets (posted on the community board, of course) and she sometimes collects a cash reward. She finds people in need, and people who have things to fill her needs as well.

Other quirky characters also populate small-town Murbridge: the person who mysteriously leaves soup; Jake Zdzynzky, chair of the town select board and general pain in the rear; an elderly woman who really wants to escape her assisted living facility run by nuns; the tulip lady posting of her lost love; Marcus—oh, you just have to get to know the kind and idealistic Marcus.

Tara Conklin has written two other excellent novels: The House Girl and The Last Romantics. I recommend both, as well as this, her most recent novel.

Nevermore: Between the States, Gardens in the Dunes, Stringbean, Girl Forgotten

 

Reported by Rita

Between the States: Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia During the Civil War by V.N. Bud Phillips is an account of what daily life was like in the new town during a very difficult time. Phillips wrote several books of local history about Bristol, and relied heavily on oral stories from Bristol’s oldest citizens. Our reader liked the inclusion of documents and diary entries from the period as well as other information about the beginnings of Bristol. PP

Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko is a historical novel about Indigo, a young Native American girl taken from the fictional Sand Lizard tribe by white soldiers. Indigo is forced into a government school to learn the ways of white children before being rescued by a kind woman and her husband. Our reader enjoyed it and said it is worth reading more than once. AH

Stringbean: The Life and Murder of a Country Legend by Taylor Hagood is the true story of David “Stringbean” Akeman, famed cast member of country music variety show Hee Haw, and his tragic murder along with his wife in 1973. Our read found this unsolved murder and courtroom drama to be sad but very interesting. DC

Girl Forgotten by Karin Slaughter is the suspense-filled tale of a new US Marshall who has a hidden connection to her first assigned case. Emily Vaughn was killed in a small town in 1982, but forty years later clues emerge to bring a killer to justice. Our reader enjoyed this recent standalone novel, as she enjoys most anything written by Slaughter. KP

 

Also Mentioned:

All Quite on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Violeta by Isabel Allende

The Questions That Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom by Jane Smiley

Wish You Well by David Baldacci

Ripper by Isabel Allende

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Subpar Parks by Amber Shore (E-book only on TN READS)

With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson

 

New Books:

Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South by T.R.C. Hutton

All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Sam and Sadie met in a children’s hospital in California. Sam was a patient; Sadie wasn’t. Sadie was just there to visit her sister Alice, who had the fortunate misfortune of having childhood cancer, but a cancer that was almost always curable. Sam had been in a horrendous car accident which crushed his foot and thus he required many surgeries to try to fix it. Also, Sam wasn’t talking. Until Sadie.

Sam and Sadie spend hundreds of hours playing video games together in the game room of the hospital. Sam begins to recover, although his foot will never be the same as before the accident. Sam and Sadie become the best of friends, until they aren’t.

Several years later, Sam is a junior at Harvard when he runs into Sadie in Boston. She is a student at MIT learning how to program video games. The two begin a collaboration which will make them famous as developers of the worldwide sensation Ichigo. The title character is a young Japanese child swept out to sea who must make their way back to land and their family through a series of challenges and decision-making.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes Sam and Sadie from childhood to adulthood with all the expected fumbling and pains along the way. Sam has to deal with an ongoing disability due to the damage his foot sustained in that long ago accident, as well as his social awkwardness. He is half-Korean, half-Jewish, raised by his mother’s Korean parents. Sadie has grown up in privileged circumstances in her Jewish household. She is also one of a scarce handful of women in her advanced programming classes. Both are obviously brilliant (having landed at Harvard and MIT respectively) and care deeply for one another.

Gabrielle Zevin’s writing is compulsively readable, and I could barely pause while reading. She builds three-dimensional characters beautifully, making me want to immerse myself in their world just a little bit longer. Drawing from mythology and the woodblock print “The Great Wave at Kanagawa”, the game Ichigo reflects many aspects of Japanese culture. Even looking at the cover of this book, you can see the iconic waves drawn by Kokusai in 1829. Add in the video game style lettering with multiple trailing shadows, and I find this to be a cover worthy of the book within.

As soon as I finished this title, I began another of Zevin’s works: All These Things I’ve Done. This one is more of a young adult story and the first of a trilogy, but I am enjoying it as well. Zevin has written several other well-known novels including Elsewhere and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. By discovering this author, I definitely have added quite a few more books to my wishlist.

Cold Storage by David Koepp

 

 

Reviewed by Andrew

 

Cold Storage by David Koepp is an exciting, fast-paced science-fiction thriller, with some elements of horror as well. The book starts with two government agents tasked with investigating some type of biological threat in Australia.  When they arrive at the site, they find a pod from a space shuttle that has crash-landed to Earth. In the pod is a type of fungus that scientists were attempting to experiment with while in outer space, and as a result, has mutated into something far more lethal than anyone could have imagined. The fungus has been released from the pod and has decimated an entire Australian village at an alarming rate. The government agents are able to contain the spread of the fungus, and manage to bring a sample back to the U.S., where it is sealed in an old nuclear bunker. Fast-forward several decades, and the nuclear bunker has been converted into a civilian storage facility, and everyone has all but forgotten about what is contained several stories below ground.  Now it has managed to break loose from its containment…

I quite enjoyed the fast-paced action in the book.  The author managed to keep the story accelerating at a break-neck pace. The characters are fun and memorable, but the book doesn’t get bogged down with too many details about them. The book is written well, and is surprisingly funny considering the subject matter. This was a relatively quick read, and it felt like the book equivalent of watching an action-packed summer blockbuster.

The main criticism I have about this book is that it felt very similar to certain other stories. Cold Storage seemed to borrow heavily from Michael Crichton, and certain plot points felt eerily similar to the well-known video game, The Last of Us. I also think the book could have been scarier, not holding a flame to Stephen King or Michael Crichton, the latter of whom I consider to be a master of science-fiction horror.

All in all, I still really enjoyed this book. While not on par with other similar stories that manage to do it better, this book still has a story of its own to tell, and is written in a way that is fun and engaging, making you want to keep reading to find out what could possibly happen in the next chapter. If you enjoy science-fiction or thrillers, I would definitely recommend this book.

Nevermore: Summer of 1876, Lock Every Door, Little Shoes

 

Reported by Rita

Summer of 1876: Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends in the Season That Defined the American West by Chris Wimmer has it all, from infamous lawmen, presidents, bank robbers, and gun slingers to baseball players. Our reader described it as a very fascinating book that is very descriptive, painting a sometimes exhausting picture of life in the American West during that era.  NH

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager is a mystery thriller about young Jules Larson who is starting a new job as an apartment sitter in a mysterious, high-profile Manhattan building. When another sitter in the building goes missing, Jules starts looking into the building’s history and discovers others have gone missing before. This book was described as a real page turner, full of twists and turns. MP

Little Shoes: The Sensational Depression-Era Murders That Became My Family’s Secret by Pamela Everett is a true crime story about the murder of three young girls in 1937 in California, a wrongful conviction and execution, and the author uncovering family secrets that held the truth of an 80 year old criminal case. A very sad but incredibly interesting story. CD

Also Mentioned:

The Paris Deception by Bryn Turnbull

The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim

Come Sing, Jimmy Jo by Katherine Paterson

The Old Lion by Jeff Shaara

Micro by Michael Crichton, Richard Preston

Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

New Books:

Watch Us Shine by Marisa de los Santos

The Story of Becoming Piney Flats by Robert Sorrell

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, it’s a good time to also reflect on our local origins.  Piney Flats is at the center of some of that history: it was the first seat of government for the Southwest Territory in 1790 when Tennessee Governor William Blount had his headquarters here until moving to Knoxville in 1792.

Many may be familiar with Rocky Mount, where pioneer William Cobb built a house that is now a popular tourist site.  Other familiar names show up in Piney Flats history, including King, Masengill, and DeVault.  Less familiar to me was the name Wolfe, so I was intrigued to learn that about the furniture factory set up by the Wolfe Brothers. Their primary product was customized church furniture.

The book is entertainingly written as well as being a wealth of information, and well-illustrated with photographs. There are some brief family histories, as well as information about businesses, churches, schools, and other local attractions such as Bristol Motor Speedway and Boone Dam.  Sorrells received the “Project Excellence Award” from the East Tennessee Historical Society for this book, and it’s easy to see why.

If you have any interest in local history, this may be a book for you!