Louisiana books make for great summer reading

Releasing this Tuesday is Suzanne Palmieri’s “The Witch of Bourbon Street,” a novel set in the formerly opulent Sorrow Estate, once home to a magical family but now in ruins since a series of murders in 1902. Part ghost story, part mystery, the story follows Bronwyn Whalen as she returns home after 14 years to solve the family mystery and face the demons of her past.

Palmieri lives in Connecticut with her husband and three daughters but has roots along the Florida and Alabama coast. Her former books include “The Witch of Belladonna Bay” and “The Witch of Little Italy.” 

She will sign copies of her books, including the latest, her New Orleans title, at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Octavia Books in New Orleans.

            Also coming out this week is “Scotlandville” by Rachel L. Emanuel, Ruby Jean Simms and Charles Vincent, who will read from and sign copies of their new book at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Maple Street Book Shop in New Orleans. A rural village that was once the entry point for the slave trade and home to a cotton plantation, Scotlandville became the largest majority African American town in Louisiana. Located in the northern part of East Baton Rouge Parish, Scotlandville’s history is intricately tied to Southern University and A&M College System, the only historically black university system in the United States.

Vic Hummert of Lafayette worked for many years as a chaplain to the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center but his heart lies in environmental activism. He has published several books that combine information on global warming and other environmental issues with his love of haiku. Hummert’s latest book, “Our Sacred Ocean is Suffering Now,” tackles the strain occurring on our oceans and the effect of pollution on its ecosystems. Well documented and produced, Hummert offers great arguments for change before our waters are irreparably harmed. Hummert’s books are available at Amazon.com. For more information, visit www.vichummert.org.

Louisiana storyteller, inventor and master turkey hunter Kenny Morgan published his first book, “Turkey Hunting: A One Man Game,” in 1987. He and his wife, Sally Stuart Morgan, then began a cottage business titled Morgan’s Turkey Callers that sold turkey callers, videos and books. Sally Morgan just published Kenny Morgan’s latest book posthumously, “America, Wild Turkeys and Mongrel Dogs: Life Lessons from a Hunting Master,” a collection of essays centered around hunting and growing up in Jackson, Louisiana, in the mid-20th century. Sally Morgan also created

Morgan’s Americana, an umbrella company that includes Morgan’s Turkey Callers as well as a publishing arm for the wildlife, hunting, and conservation community. For more information, visit http://www.wildturkeys.com/.

  

Book events this week

            I’ll be teaching “So You Want to Get Published” for those wanting to learn more about the publishing world, both traditional and self publishing, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at UL’s Continuing Education. For information, call 482-6386 or visit www.ce.louisiana.edu.

            Neal Bertrand signs copies of his latest book, “Dad’s War Photos,” from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble Lafayette.

            Kent Wascom of New Orleans will be signing copies of his book, “Secessia,” at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Octavia Books in New Orleans. Wascom was awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction. “The Blood ofHeaven” was his first novel.

            Katy Simpson Smith, author of “The Story of Land and Sea,” will interview Laura Lane McNeal, author of “Dollbaby,” at 6 p.m. Thursday at Octavia Books of New Orleans.

Secondary students hailing from across the United States participating in the Putney Student Travel program, “Writing in the American South”, will celebrate the work they’ve done over two weeks of exploring New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta with a final reading from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Maple Street Book Shop of New Orleans. Refreshments will be served.

            Big Freedia, ambassador of the Bounce movement and a visitor to this year’s Festival International, will sign and read from her memoir, “Big Freedia: GodSave the Queen Diva,” at 6 p.m. Friday at Octavia Books of New Orleans. Big Freedia was born Freddie Ross in New Orleans and is a hip hop musician known for bringing “bounce” from the underground music scene to the forefront. She is also the star of “Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce” reality show on the Fuse network.
           Ronald F. Borne will discuss and sign copies of “Troutmouth: The Two Careers of HughClegg” at 6 p.m. Thursday at Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans. Clegg was a member of the FBI from 1926 to 1954, during which time he rose to the top leadership and worked directly under Director J. Edgar Hoover. In his second career, as executive assistant to Chancellor J. D. Williams at the University of Mississippi from 1954 to 1969, he was in a top leadership position before and during the civil rights crises.

Louisiana Book News is written by Cheré Coen, the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “ExploringCajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

New releases, book news, events and more!

New releases

            Carolyn Brown has published “Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker,” a woman described as “the most famous person nobody knows.” She will sign this new book and “A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty” at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Maple Street Book Shop in New Orleans.

            The 1718 Society’s featured reader for April is Katy Simpson Smith, who will read from her book “The Story of Land and Sea” at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Columns Hotel in New Orleans. Smith is an adjunct professor at Tulane University and is the author of “We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835.”

            Skip Horack offers the tale of a man nearly defeated by life who is given one last chance at redemption in “The Other Joseph.” Roy Joseph is haunted by the disappearance of his older brother Tommy in the first Gulf War, living in an Airstream trailer in South Louisiana when he isn’t working the oil rigs. Just before his 30th birthday, Joseph is contacted by a teenage girl from California claiming to be his lost brother’s biological daughter. A native of Louisiana, Horack is an assistant professor at Florida State University.

            Randy Fertel, who has taught English at Harvard, Tulane and UNO, has published “A Taste for Chaos: The Art of Improvisation in Literature.” Kirkus Reviews calls the book “a tour de force of reading in the fields of literary theory and history” and “an inquisitive examination of the impulse that yields literary improvisation — which is to say, literature itself.” Fertel is also the author of a New Orleans memoir based on his parents, “The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak.”

            Bob Bienvenue of Lafayette, who holds several titles in power lifting and hosts a weekly TV show on mental illness, has published a memoir titled “From Light to Darkness to Glory.” Bienvenue recounts how a traumatic experience triggered schizophrenia when he was a young man and his journey to come to grips with the disease through powerlifting and his Christian faith.

At the library

            I’ll be speaking at the Ouachita Parish Library this Thursday, April 9, discussing writing, the books I have written and the path to publishing. I’ll be at the West Ouachita Branch Library at 10 a.m. and at the J.R. Searcy Branch Library at 2 p.m. Please come by and say hello. Other events happening at the library this week include a live guitar performance at 2 p.m. Monday at the Anna Meyer Branch Library and Jamie Mayes presenting “Poetic Reflections: A Celebration of Jazz and Culture” at 6 p.m. Monday at the Louise Williams Branch Library. There will be a screening of “Dead Poets’ Society” at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Main Branch and “Essential Oils: Healing Oils of the Bible” by Kristi Steelman at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Ouachita Valley Branch Library.

            Zachary Richard will speak about his book, “The History of the Acadians of Louisiana” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 9, at the South Regional Library as part of the Bayou State Book Talks presented by the Center for Louisiana Studies.

            Warren and Mary Perrin, editors of “Acadie Then and Now: A People’s History,” will speak at noon Friday, April 10, at the LSU-Eunice Arnold LeDoux Library. For more information, call 233-5832, or email perrin@plddo.com.

Book events

            Justin A Nystrom signs “New Orleans After the Civil War: Race, Politics, and a New Birth of Freedom” at 6 p.m. Thursday at Octavia Books in New Orleans. Nystrom is an assistant professor of history at Loyola University New Orleans and the co-director of the Center for the Study of New Orleans.

            The 12th annual Jambalaya Writers’ Conference will be Saturday at the Terrebonne Parish Library in Houma and will feature New York Times best-selling author Wally Lamb as the keynote speaker. Lamb is the author of “The Hour I First Believed,” “I Know This Much is True” and “She’s Come Undone.” He was twice selected for Oprah’s Book Club and his latest book is “We Are Water.” For more information, visit http://mytpl.org/jwc/.
            David and Ashley Havird will sign copies of their collection of poetry, “Sleeping With Animals,” at 11 a.m. Saturday at Agora Borealis in Shreveport. Other titles available for signing will be “Map Home,” “Penelope’s Design” and “The Garden of the Fugitives.”

Louisiana Book News is written by Cheré Coen, the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “ExploringCajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Katy Simpson Smith debuts impressive novel of loss and love, 'The Story of Land and Sea'

            Katy Simpson Smith hails from Jackson, Miss., but she’s ours now, serving as an adjunct professor at Tulane. Her debut novel, “The Story of Land and Sea” (HarperCollins) follows three generations of loss, love and faith around the time of the American Revolution along the North Carolina coast.

            There’s unforgiving Asa, owner of the turpentine plantation who loses his wife in childbirth, and his headstrong daughter Helen who elopes with John, a man whose career spans piracy, soldiering and shopkeeping. John also experiences the death of his wife through childbirth and escapes to the sea when his ten-year-old daughter Tabitha contracts yellow fever. Rounding out the story is Moll, a slave bought as Helen’s companion who is married off against her will, bearing several children, including her beloved Davy who offers John a new beginning.

            Smith chose Beaufort, N.C., as the book’s setting after being inspired by a gravesite there, and because of the town’s changing economic character. “The Revolution was coming to a close, but few people knew what a United States would look like,” she is quoted in the book’s press materials. “The town of Beaufort was in a period of decline, losing townspeople to larger cities as economic centers shifted. And the landscape itself was amorphous; on the coast, the land slides into the ocean in bands of marsh and swamp with few clear boundaries. This setting, then, was ideal for characters with similarly tenuous lives.”

            “ ‘The Story of Land and Sea’ is the best novel I have read all year,” said best-selling author Anita Shreve. “The writing is word-perfect with its nearly biblical cadences, its taut and relentlessly spare sentences, and its unusually wise utterances, all of which contribute to the sheer joy that come from finding oneself in an imagined universe that feels as real as a splinter in a finger.”

            We look forward to more novels from this impressive debut artist.

            Note: Smith is also the author of “We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835.”

Cheré Coen is the author of “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana” and co-author of “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets.” Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.