Book highlights of 2017, Part II

On this the last day of the year I conclude my year in Louisiana books, spotlighting some of the literary highlights of 2017. Please remember it’s only the highlights. It’d be impossible to include all the great news that happened this year. I’d love to hear what books you loved this past 2017. Please post your favorites on the Louisiana Book News Facebook page.

  

William Joyce

Young readers

I’m a huge fan of Kimberly Willis Holt and her young reader books, but her latest, “Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel,” became my favorite. It concerns 13-year-old Stevie who loses her parents in a car accident and is forced to move in with her grumpy grandfather, Winston, who owns a run-down motel in Esther, Texas.

Atheneum Young Readers published several of William Joyce’s children’s books this year, under the label of “The World of William Joyce.” There was “Bentley & Egg,” “A Day with Wilbur Robinson” (Joyce produced the film adaption known as “Meet the Robinsons”) and “Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo,” among others.

Just in time for Hurricane Season was the young adult novel “Into the Hurricane” by Neil Connelly, an author who weathered five hurricanes while living in Lake Charles and uses that experience for this action-packed story where two teens finds themselves riding out a fierce storm off the Cameron Parish coast.

Evangeline Riley is quite happy living at the bottom of the world in a small fishing village known as Bayou Perdu in Plaquemines Parish until Hurricane Katrina arrives in Joanne O’Sullivan’s young adult tale “Between Two Skies.”

Saving Louisiana

C.E. Richard has published “Land’s End: Field Notes from the End of the World,” a collection of essays about Louisiana’s coastal erosion with photos by Frank McMains.

“Ain’t There No More: Louisiana’s Disappearing Coastal Plain” by Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis spotlights the neglect of our coastline and the result of man-made flood control measures in aiding to the erosion of Louisiana’s coast.

Another University of Mississippi Press book detailing the Mississippi River and efforts to reign in this beast is James F. Barnett Jr.’s “Beyond Control: The Mississippi River’s New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico.” Barnett insists that even with the US Army Corps of Engineers Control Complex at Old River, which keeps the Mississippi from emerging through its historic channel and heading down the Atchafalaya Basin, the river will one day change course.

Cookbooks

Lucy Buffett, who owns Lulu’s in Gulf Shores and Destin, tackled the Louisiana dish with “Gumbo Love: Recipes for Gulf Coast Cooking.”

Megan Braden-Perry takes readers on a delightful tour of snowball heaven with “Crescent City Snow: The Ultimate Guide to New Orleans Snowball Stands,” published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.

Dixie Poché of Lafayette published a sweet culinary history book with recipes titled “Louisiana Sweets: King Cakes, Bread Pudding & Sweet Dough Pie.”

Melinda Winans discovered 250 recipes of her father-in-law and published them in “The Fonville Winans Cookbook: Recipes and Photographs from a Louisiana Artist,” published by LSU Press.

2017 Book News

A Sisters in Crime chapter began in New Orleans this year, a national organization that promotes the advancement, recognition and professional development of women crime writers. The group meets at the East Bank Regional Library in Metairie.

The annual Dave Robicheaux's Hometown Literary Festival has been renamed the Books Along the Teche Literary Festival: Celebrating New Iberia, Dave Robicheaux's Hometown.

Maple Street Book Shop of New Orleans closed Aug 26 after 53 years in business.

The Conundrum, the latest independent bookstore to open in Louisiana, is now going into the publishing business. The St. Francisville bookstore has created Feliciana Publishing Partners.

The Festival of Words literary festival in Grand Coteau celebrated 10 years this November with featured authors Darrell Bourque, Allison Joseph and Patricia Smith.

The 20th anniversary of Words and Music, a Literary Feast in New Orleans, sponsored annually by the Faulkner Society, was celebrated this month. 

Book awards

“Freedom in Congo Square,” a picture book set in New Orleans that’s illustrated by R. Gregory Christie and written by Carole Boston Weatherford, took a Caldecott Honor Book award and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book award.

Author, illustrator and pioneer in the digital and animation industry William Joyce was honored as the 2017 Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

T. Geronimo Johnson of New Orleans won the inaugural Simpson Family Literary Prize, which awards $50,000 to “an author of fiction in the middle of a burgeoning career.” Johnson is the author of “Welcome to Braggsville,” longlisted for the 2015 National Book Award, the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and winner of the 2015 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

Steve Rabalais’ book, “General Fox Conner: Pershing’s Chief of Operations and Eisenhower’s Mentor,” won the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award in the field of biography for books published in 2016.

Louisiana author, songwriter and musician Johnette Downing was awarded the 18th annual Louisiana Writer Award at the Louisiana Book Festival in October.

Jack Bedell, professor of the Humanities at Southeastern Louisiana University, was chosen as the next Louisiana poet laureate.

Jesmyn Ward, associate professor of creative writing at Tulane, received the 2017 National Book Award for “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Ward is a past National Book Award winner for “Salvage the Bones,” a novel about a family facing a hurricane on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association awarded Rashauna Johnson’s “Slavery’s Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans during the Age of Revolutions” the winner of the 2016 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History.

Jack E. Davis won the 2017 Kirkus Prize for “The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” an environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that considers the ravages of nature and man.

New Orleans writer Ladee Hubbard’s novel, “The Talented Ribkins,” was named winner of the 2017 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. 

Photographer Philip Gould and cultural anthropologist Maida Owens won the 2016 and 2017 James Williams Rivers Award for Louisiana Studies.

Chere Coen is the author of several Louisiana non-fiction books and the “Viola Valentine” Louisiana paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Book highlights of 2017, Part I

I’m not a fan of the “Best Books of the Year” list because who could possibly read every book out there within a year’s time? I have a hard time just keeping up with books by Louisiana authors or ones written about our unique and interesting state. Instead, I’m going to give you the highlights of my book year in this column and in next week’s, and please remember it’s only the highlights. It’d be impossible to include all the great book news that happened in one year’s time. I’d love to hear what books you’ve enjoyed this past 2017. Please post your favorites on the Louisiana Book News Facebook page.

The professors

Wiley Cash, who received his Ph.D. from UL-Lafayette, now lives in North Carolina where he set his latest book, “The Last Ballad.” The novel concerns the real Ella May Wiggins, who worked the cotton mills of North Carolina and joined the union movement, gaining popularity for her ballads of equality. The Last Ballad” resonates with pain, love, the struggle of life and the gross injustices of the world. 

Genaro Ky Ly Smith, a professor of creative writing at Louisiana Tech, sets his novel “The Land South of the Clouds” in the summer of 1979, a turning point for 10-year-old Long-Vanh, the novel’s narrator when his mother decides to leave Los Angeles and her American husband and return to Vietnam.

Award-winning author Arlie Russell Hochschild, a retired professor of sociology at U.C. Berkeley, a liberal California town, traveled to conservative Lake Charles in an attempt to bridge an “empathy wall” in “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.”

Famous people       

Donna Brazile, a Louisiana native who worked as a political strategist and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, published “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that put Donald Trump in the White House.” The book details the aftermath of the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Convention, the resignation of party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the final months of the 2016 campaign.

Walter Isaacson published his latest biography, “Leonardo da Vinci.” Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN and editor of Time magazine. He is the author of “The Innovators,” “Steve Jobs,” “Einstein: His Life and Universe,” “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life” and “Kissinger: A Biography.” He is the coauthor of “The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.”

Best-selling author Anne Rice of New Orleans and her son Christopher Rice have published “Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra,” a “tale of ancient feuds and modern passions.”

Other favorite novels

Three New Orleans generations make up Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s heart-wrenching novel, “A Kind of Freedom,” each suffering through desires, ambitions and brutal limitations.

Ronlyn Domingue, who received her master’s of fine arts in creative writing from LSU, has been tackling an impressive, innovative and intricate trilogy spanning a thousand years in a fairy-tale land in “The Keeper of Tales Trilogy.” It’s an amazing body of work — adventure, myth, legends and symbolism spun together in a tapestry of tales that’s colored with a fascinating use of language.

Unusual history

Pamela D. Arceneaux, senior librarian and rare books curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection, collected information from the rare “blue books,” directories of madams and prostitutes of the Storyville red light district of New Orleans, for “Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans.”

Christopher G. Pena looks at the strange happenings of Dr. Etienne Deschamps, who worked as a dentist, but many times treated his patients with magnetic and hypnotic powers in New Orleans of the late 1800s. His book, “The Strange Case of Dr. Etienne Deschamps: Murder in the New Orleans French Quarter” examines indecent acts upon two sisters while under hypnosis, resulting in the death of one.

William Wade Watson published the diary of Elizabeth Lucille Cook, who lived in Tensas Parish at Cross Keys Plantation from the 1920s to her death in 1985. “High Water, High Cotton and High Times” provides a rare glimpse into rural Louisiana life leading up to World War II.

Marita Woywod Crandle offers several creepy stories, some with a skeptical slant, in “New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend.”

In author news

Farrah Rochon, a prolific romance author from St. Charles Parish, has a passion for Disney World and “Hamilton,” the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. I’m forever jealous reading her social media posts for she’s off to enjoy both on a regular basis.     This year, she brought her niece and nephew to New York in January to see “Hamilton” as their 2016 Christmas gift. (Talk about a nice aunt!) If that wasn’t enough, she went again in August, making it her fifth time seeing the immensely popular Broadway hit.

            More “Books of 2017” coming up next Sunday.

Chere Coen is the author of several Louisiana non-fiction books and the “Viola Valentine” Louisiana paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Tuesday Ebook Spotlight: Blake's 'Louisiana Knights'

Best-selling Louisiana author Jennifer Blake, who has a career writing romance that spans 50 years, and Phoenix Sullivan are retiring from the ownership of Steel Magnolia Press. They won’t stop writing, but the sales and freebies they have been promoting will slow down after March 2018.

“But between now and then, we’ll be offering some really super deals,” they announced in an email.

Here’s one for the holidays….

LOUISIANA KNIGHTS
HOLIDAY PACK

Jennifer Blake
 

FREE through Dec 18.
Only available through January ($6.99).

CHIVALRY LIVES IN THE SULTRY SOUTH!

LANCELOT OF THE PINES
Mandy can take care of herself; she doesn't need a deputy to do it for her. Lance is determined to keep her safe. Thrown together on the run, can they survive bullets and betrayals—and their forbidden attraction?

GALAHAD IN JEANS
Carla is assigned the irksome job of writing the profile for her magazine's Perfect Southern Gentleman. Beau wants no part of it. Reluctant editor or reluctant gentleman—who'll win this contest of wills and hearts?

CHRISTMAS KNIGHT
When a dispute over a Christmas tree lands Jake Benedict flat on his back, the nurse he quarreled with renders first aid. He and Donna have a fiery past, brief as it was. Is it possible they also have a future?

PICK UP YOUR FREE COPY AT AMAZON NOW THROUGH DEC 18!

Louisiana Book News is written by Chere Dastugue Coen, award-winning author of several non-fiction books about Louisiana. She also writes novels under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her novel series all begin with a book that's available as a FREE download. 

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Photographer Gould, cultural anthropologist Owens win James Williams Rivers Prize in Louisiana Studies

Photographer Philip Gould was awarded the 2016 James William Rivers Prize in Louisiana Studies for his “extensive documentation and celebration of Louisiana through documentary and architectural photography,” according to the UL-Lafayette Center for Louisiana Studies, which administers the prize. Gould’s photographs are featured in more than a dozen books as well as other publications, and he has won several awards including the Louisiana Governor’s Arts Award for Best Artist and the first Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography given by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

The 2017 recipient is cultural anthropologist Maida Owens, chosen for her “longstanding commitment to and leadership in preserving and expanding our understanding of Louisiana’s cultures through folkloric survey work and the dissemination of research through innovative and diverse channels and media.” Owens has served as Folklife Program director for the Louisiana Division of the Arts for nearly three decades and received the Benjamin A. Botkin Prize for lifetime achievement in public folklore from the American Folklore Society. She is an author, documentary producer and researcher and has won numerous awards, including the 1993 American Anthropological Award of Excellence and the 1993 American Association for the State and Local History Award of Merit.

Buy books!

Books make excellent gifts and provide hours of entertainment, education and enjoyment. If you’re in need of gift ideas, here are some wonderful Louisiana-based coffee table books to consider.

I’ve always been fascinated by Marfa, that small West Texas town that became a haven for artists over the past few decades. Photographer John Slaughter, who shares his time between Marfa and his hometown of Grand Coteau, introduces us to this unique spot of Americana in a gorgeous book of photography titled “Marfa and the Mystique of Far West Texas,” published by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press. The sunsets are brilliant, the rain bursts rare but breathtaking, the artwork unusual and unique and the sky as big as Texas. I’ll never curse that stretch of I-10 again after viewing Slaughter’s photos. Instead, I’ve got Marfa on my bucket list.

I reported earlier of meeting Emile Waagenaar at the Louisiana Book Festival and hearing his story of how he listened to Cajun music in his home in the Netherlands. Waagenaar traveled to Louisiana to witness and photograph this unique sound and the result is a insightful coffee table book of photographs titled “Arrete pas la musique! Portraits of South Louisiana,” also published by ULL Press.

Holiday cookbooks

Melinda Risch Winans was introduced to photographer Theodore Fonville Winans by way of marriage to his son, and over the years she appreciated not only his photographic talents but his culinary creations as well. When she discovered about 250 of her father-in-law’s handwritten recipes after his death, she decided to turn them into a cookbook. The result is “The Fonville Winans Cookbook: Recipes and Photographs from a Louisiana Artist,” co-written with Cynthia Lejeune Nobles and published by LSU Press, recently named a Fall 2017 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. The book naturally includes the recipes, but also Fonville Winans’ story accented by his photos, many of which have never been seen in print. Chef John Folse, whose own cookbooks used Winans’ photographs as inspiration for his covers, writes the foreword.

Another delightful cookbook combines traditional Southern food with French cooking techniques. “Dinner Déjà Vu: Southern Tonight, French Tomorrow” by Chef Jennifer Hill Booker, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and a Georgia resident, explains how to create healthy Southern dishes with a French flare. Many recipes will resonate with Louisiana residents and their fusion cuisine, dishes such as braised quail with wild mushrooms and cognac, asparagus and Vidalia onion quiche, succotash with tarragon and crème fraiche and cherry pie with Chantilly crème. Of course, there’s braised collard greens, shrimp and grits, shrimp Creole and other Southern favorites. Booker is also the author of “Field Peas to Fois Gras: Southern Recipes with a French Accent.”

New releases

Jennifer Bates of Lafayette has published her debut novel, a romantic suspense titled “The Boss’s Daughter,” the first book in the “Black Rose Series.” Set in Massachusetts and Louisiana, the daughter of a mob boss must choose between her loyalty to the family and the FBI.

Deborah LeBlanc of Lafayette has published “The Witch’s Thirst” by Harlequin Nocturnal, where if a witch from a long and distinguished line loves a human, all of humanity will suffer. Resisting the temptations of men has never been terribly difficult for Evette Francois — until she meets Lucien Hyland.

William Watson recently wrote to gush about a Louisiana novelist he enjoys. Pat Joffrion has published two novels, “Complicit” and “Unknown Justice,” “each of which I could not lay down but had to continue reading these spellbinding novels based on some real-life experiences of the author,” Watson wrote me. Sounds like good reading to me.

Chere Coen is the author of several Louisiana non-fiction books and the “Viola Valentine” Louisiana paranormal mystery series under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

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Tuesday Ebook Spotlight: Holiday discounts, freebies

It’s no mystery why veterinarian Callie Webber is having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit. When the residents of her small hometown aren’t pitying her because of her ex-husband’s very public departure, they’re attempting to hook her up with a man…any man. Fed up with being everyone’s favorite charity case, Callie considers closing her animal clinic and moving to the big city. But, before she goes, she decides to give herself a Christmas treat to remember: a romantic holiday fling. And who better to have a fling with than the gorgeous newcomer who is turning heads around Maplesville? 

Does "A Perfect Holiday Fling" sound like the perfect holiday read? For a limited time, author Farrah Rochon of Louisiana is gifting this ebook novella for free!

Want to know more? Here’s the hero’s side:

When injured Navy pilot Stefan Sutherland reluctantly rescues a gutter cat for the sake of his five-year-old nephew, he never imagined it would lead to him discovering Maplesville’s most fascinating attraction…its smoking hot vet. Getting involved with a woman was the last thing Stefan anticipated when he agreed to care for his nephew during his Army nurse sister’s deployment, but if he’s going to spend the holidays in this sleepy Southern town, why not make the most of it with the perfect holiday fling.

99-cent Holiday Specials

My good friend Colleen Mooney, author of the New Orleans Go Cup Chronicles, is part of "The 12 Slays of Christmas" anthology. This fun collection of stories is only 99 cents right now (get it fast) and all proceeds help animals needing rescue in Houston and Florida. 

Here's where to buy "The 12 Slays of Christmas":
Amazon: http://bit.ly/amz12Slays
Nook: http://bit.ly/BN12Slays
Kobo: http://bit.ly/Kobo12Slays
iBooks: http://bit.ly/iBook12Slays

How about getting away from the daily grind? 

That’s all middle-aged professor Ollie Stratford hopes to do when she moves to a quiet little Texas town. Ollie is soon thrust into a murder along with an oddball reporter, a dreadlocks-flashing lawyer, a grandma who teaches mixed martial arts and a stray dog named Bodie! If you like cozy mysteries, clever animals, southern charm and coffee, you'll love "Texas Troubles" by N.C. Lewis, the first in the fun Ollie Stratford Murder Mysteries, and it's only 99 cents to download.

Click here for the Kindle version.

Louisiana Book News is written by Chere Dastugue Coen, award-winning author of several non-fiction books about Louisiana. She also writes novels under the pen name of Cherie Claire. Her novel series all begin with a book that's available as a FREE download.