Magnolia Elegy pays homage to an Agrarian time and place. It tells of the passing of that Time and the loss of that Place—undespairing, seeking no pity—through the eyes of the writer, the third generation of his placeholder family. It is memoir of a Place in the Lowcountry, and the inhabitants: animal, vegetable, and human—and how the land shaped them as they strove to shape the land. The storyteller tells tales from the family oral tradition, and from the early writings of family members. He tells stories from his own memory and from theirs. He tells the stories that aren’t already lost, and alludes to those that have been lost. Throughout the telling he threads recognition of the unreliable nature of memory, particularly within family dynamic and dysfunction (coming to terms with a parent). And, so goes five generations of story, seeded with the hopeful wisdom of the old ones, informed by reading and travel, presided over by Thomas—the elder—and his code of self-serving. The setting is a Place on the Orangeburg Scarp, in the plain of the Edisto River fork. The telling includes the lay of the land, the fields, the allure of the woods, the work performed, and the food—including recipes for the preparation of the mid-day meals. Included at the end of Magnolia Elegy are stories of frenetic travel after leaving the Place at midlife, and essays demonstrating the values earned from the Place and from its animal and human community. The structure of the book accommodates selective reading—it can effectively be read in any order, even backward.

A wounded Confederate soldier treks across the ruins of America in this National Book Award–winning novel: “A stirring Civil War tale told with epic sweep.” —People Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves. His journey across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. Meanwhile, the intrepid Ada is trying to revive her father’s derelict farm and learning to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic odyssey, hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.

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A trio of short stories featuring legendary lawman Carl Webster - star of THE HOT KID. 1940s' Oklahoma. Germans in a stateside POW camp have murdered one of their own and US Marshal Carl Webster, back from a tour of duty in the Pacific, is called in to investigate. Among others, he comes across a Jewish gangster bent on revenge for the Holocaust; a rodeo bull rider turned lawman; and a former Nazi guard who is a persistent runaway. Befriending the escapee, Carl becomes embroiled in a tale of gangsters' molls, enemy lines, espionage, double-crossing and a lovers' wartime promise that could to more trouble than he ever imagined...

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit is a collection of twenty-two powerful and indispensable essays on Native American life, written by one of America's foremost literary voices. Bold and impassioned, sharp and defiant, Leslie Marmon Silko's essays evoke the spirit and voice of Native Americans. Whether she is exploring the vital importance literature and language play in Native American heritage, illuminating the inseparability of the land and the Native American people, enlivening the ways and wisdom of the old-time people, or exploding in outrage over the government's long-standing, racist treatment of Native Americans, Silko does so with eloquence and power, born from her profound devotion to all that is Native American. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit is written with the fire of necessity. Silko's call to be heard is unmistakable—there are stories to remember, injustices to redress, ways of life to preserve. It is a work of major importance, filled with indispensable truths—a work by an author with an original voice and a unique access to both worlds.

Autobiography of a newspaperman and editor who grew up in the wilderness of Montana.