It is 1933, and a pandemic of homelessness, joblessness, despair, and financial ruin grip the nation. Wind and drought ravage the central plains, and an ambitious new president takes office. Under such circumstances, Annie Young, her parents, and a dog named Bitsy abandon the Dust Bowl for a fresh start back east. Still harboring deep wounds from the Civil War, there are strange undercurrents in Hillview that defy reason or virtue. The innocent girl is befriended by Miss Mittie, an old woman marked by scandal, and a ragtag boy from ages past. Both are hostage to an untold story - one that Annie is compelled to reveal. Fortified by curiosity and two kindred spirits, Annie pursues her goal, one that may change the course for many who are yet to travel the red dirt road of life. And so it begins, in the historic beauty of the Shenandoah Valley at the very apex of the Southern Rebellion. The road takes us to the parched and impoverished Midwest, then back to the valley in 1933. Too long, old prejudices and secrecy have poisoned the community. It is time for the truth to come forth - to empower her descendants, her kindred spirits, and all who may be touched by this tale.

The Democratic Party left rural America behind. This urgent rallying cry shows how Democrats can win back and empower overlooked communities that have been pushing politics to the right—and why long-term progressive political power depends on it. Through 2 successful elections in rural red districts that few thought could be won by a Democrat, twentysomethings Maine state senator Chloe Maxmin (D-District 13) and campaign manager Canyon Woodward saw how the Democratic Party has focused for too long on the interests of elite leaders and big donors, forcing the party to abandon the concerns of rural America—jeopardizing climate justice, racial equity, economic justice, and more. Dirt Road Revival looks at how we got here and lays out a road map for progressive campaigns in rural America to build an inclusive, robust, grassroots politics that fights for equity and justice across our country. First, Maxmin and Woodward detail how rural America has been left behind. They explore rural healthcare, economic struggle, brain drain, aging communities, whiteness and racism, education access, broadband, Big Agriculture, and more. Drawing on their own experiences, they paint a picture of rural America today and pinpoint the strategic failures of Democrats that have caused the party to lose its rural foothold. Next, they tell the story of their successful campaigns in the most rural county in the most rural state in the nation. In 2018, Maxmin became the only Democrat to ever win Maine House District 88 and then unseated the highest-ranking Republican in Maine —the Senate Minority Leader—in 2020, making her the youngest woman senator in Maine’s history. Finally, Maxmin and Woodward distill their experiences into concrete lessons that can be applied to rural districts across the country to build power from the state and local levels on up. They lay out a new long-term vision for Democrats to rebuild trust and win campaigns in rural America by translating progressive values to a rural context, moving beyond the failed strategies of establishment consultants and utilizing grassroots-movement organizing strategies to effectively engage moderate rural voters.

“An ace of a novel, an ace of a writer.” —Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Red Dirt is the story of Jaxie Skinner, an unlikely professional tennis player from a blue-collar family in the sticks of rural Georgia who takes up the game at the age of three when his father scrapes a court out of the red clay behind their farmhouse. He is a natural, rising to the top of junior tennis, and at eighteen has great success at the French Open. He falls as quickly as he rose, however, when troubles back home and injuries arise. He quits the game for years, but then mounts a comeback, struggling for almost a decade in the unglamorous, low-paying minor leagues of tennis, often living out of his van, before getting one last big shot. A fascinating study of tennis, its demands and tactics, as well as a look at the insular and often selfish character required to reach the pinnacle of the sport, Red Dirt is the Rocky of tennis novels. PRAISE FOR RED DIRT “Starnes spins a tale with the pace and power of a Rafael Nadal forehand.” —Jay Jennings, editor of Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game “Alright, literate tennis fans, it’s time to put down the remote and set aside those stat sheets and take an alternately amusing and inspiring trip from the top of the pro tennis barrel to the bottom—and back again. Joe Samuel Starnes’s book radiates an aficionado’s understanding of not just how the game is played (on and off the court) but what it takes to triumph in the hyper-competitive pro game.” —Peter Bodo, Tennis magazine senior writer, ESPN columnist, and co-author of Pete Sampras’s autobiography, A Champion’s Mind “Red Dirt is solid pleasure. Starnes knows what it is to compete, to hope to be made whole by competition, to overcome not just your opponent but your own unquiet. This is a tennis novel, but any athlete—no, any reader—will learn a lot and enjoy the learning.” —John Casey, author of Spartina, winner of the National Book Award “Red Dirt isn’t just a terrific sports novel; it’s a terrific novel, period. Jaxie Skinner is a complex and compelling character, and Starnes gives him a clear, fresh, lively voice.” —Michael Griffith, author of Spikes

From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: “Has the makings of an American classic.” —Ann Patchett Growing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. “Magnificent . . . Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Kay Sanders first connected with Wisconsin sitting at her fourth-grade desk in the deep south, reading Little House in the Big Woods, never dreaming that Wisconsin would one day become her home. She grew up hearing her mother and her maternal aunts recite poetry, sing songs, argue, tell stories, and quote scripture, sealing her destiny as a poet. In her review of Sanders' chapbook That Red Dirt Road, published by Parallel Press, Lou Roach of Verse Wisconsin says "Kay Sanders understand the deep current of family that flows through the lives of those fortunate enough to have grown up in the midst of parental love, also knowing the warm affection of extended family members. Her chapbook...is more than a memoir. It is homage to the strength of connections and the sense of mutual support that flourishes wherever kinship is valued and nourished." After earning her bachelor’s degree in history from Auburn University and completing graduate work there, Sanders married her German professor, moved to Wisconsin, and raised a family of five children. She worked a variety of jobs including time spent as a substitute teacher, church secretary, and proofreader and typist of graduate theses, before retiring in 2007 as Lay Ministry Coordinator for her church. Her work has been published in Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, Fox Cry, Free Verse, and Wisconsin People and Ideas. She is the recipient of three Wisconsin Regional Writers’ Association jade rings for essay and poetry won various awards with the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets; and has won awards in the poetry contests of Wisconsin People and Ideas. She is currently working on a second poetry manuscript entitled Traveling Light and resides in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

A new Woodlea Community rural romance by USA Today bestselling author Alissa Callen. Will facing the past bring them together? After losing a patient, Dr Fliss Knight returns to small town Woodlea and buys a rundown farm, her confidence and city career in tatters. She intends to live a solitary life and hopes that the slow country pace will help her heal. Pickup rider Hewitt Sinclair is no stranger to how hairy things can get in a rodeo arena. But when he can't save the life of his twin brother, he hangs up his spurs. Determined to provide for his brother's widow and young family, he gives himself no time to grieve. But when a motorbike accident proves he needs to also look out for himself, he accepts an old friend's invitation to stay at an isolated property while his body heals. When Fliss meets the cowboy living in the bluestone stables across the garden, all her hopes for a quiet and peaceful life fade. Despite his reserve, Hewitt is impossible to ignore. As they work together to care for an abandoned dog and her puppies they find themselves drawn to each other. But as a family secret threatens every truth Fliss has ever known, and the heavy spring rain continues to fall, both Fliss and Hewitt must face their deepest fears. Will love be enough to guarantee happiness or will the past refuse to relinquish its dark hold?

"Red Dirt Memories is a tribute to a way of life that has almost disappeared as quickly as it began, taking you beyond pastures dotted with herds of cattle, past the hatchery, the feed mill, and then to the foot of Swift Hill, where a red dirt road winds down then up again for two miles. Then as now, a car raises a cloud of red dust to signal a visitor, where only a clearing is left of the pine shack it once held, with the smokehouse and the outhouse beyond long decayed and torn down. Wild honeysuckle has taken over the chimney remnants, and all the ghosts simply wait for the right moment to conjure their old memories in this timeless collection that reminds us of our similarities, rather than the differences that divide us."--Distributor's website

“Mining companies piled trash coal in a slag heap and set it ablaze. The coal burned up, but the slate didn’t. The heat turned it rose and orange and lavender. The dirt road I lived on was paved with that sharp-edged rock. We called it Red Dog. My grandmother always told me, ‘Don’t you go running on that Red Dog road.’ But oh, I did.” Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema’s childhood in 1940s Appalachia after Drema’s father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that reads like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema’s coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, jitterbug lessons, and traveling carnivals, and though it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family of saints and sinners whose lives defy the stereotypes. Just as she defies her own. Running On Red Dog Road is proof that truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to life and faith in an Appalachian childhood.

Friday Night Lights meets Mare of Easttown in this small-town mystery about an unlikely private investigator searching for a missing waitress. Pay Dirt Road is the mesmerizing debut from the 2019 Tony Hillerman Prize recipient Samantha Jayne Allen. Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas. Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan’s misgivings. When a waitress at the café goes missing, Annie and Leroy begin an investigation that leads them down rural routes and haunted byways, to noxious-smelling oil fields and to the glowing neon of local honky-tonks. As Annie works to uncover the truth she finds herself identifying with the victim in increasing, unsettling ways, and realizes she must confront her own past—failed romances, a disturbing experience she’d rather forget, and the trick mirror of nostalgia itself—if she wants to survive this homecoming.

A group of young Irish migrants leave a man called Hopper for dead on an outback road in Australia. They barely know him; no-one will miss him in their world of hostels, wild nights on cheap wine and grinding work on isolated farms. In this powerful novel about the discovery of responsibility, three young people – Fiona, Murph and Hopper – flee the collapse of their country's economy. In the heat and endless spaces of Australia they try to escape their past, but impulsive cruelty, shame and guilt drag them down, and it is easy to make terrible choices.