This is an introduction to the literature of contemporary American writer Clyde Edgerton. A North Carolina native, Edgerton has been compared to Mark Twain for his easy, humorous style, which is based in oral tradition. Like Twain and other humorous writers, Edgerton's work often contains both biting satire and exploration of very large questions about the human condition. The book contains an overview of each of his novels and his memoir in addition to offering critical commentary on theme, craft, and structure. Pedagogical support is offered with specific strategies that will encourage authentic engagement and learning. Teachers will find specific companion pieces of literature for introducing Edgerton's vivid and challenging work. This book presents the case for including more of Clyde Edgerton's work in our secondary and college English language arts classrooms as a means of revitalizing curricula and challenging the ways we traditionally think about teaching.

"This book is too good to keep to yourself. Read it aloud with someone you love, then send it to a friend. But be sure to keep a copy for yourself, because you'll want to read it again and again."-- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey Raney is a small-town Baptist. Charles is a liberal from Atlanta. And Raney is the story of their marriage. Charming, wise, funny, and truthful, it is a novel for everyone to love. "A real jewel."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"An unpretentious, finely-crafted novel that will linger with the readers like the last strains of a favorite hymn. It is more enjoyable than a pitcher full of sweet tea and one of Mattie's home-cooked dinners."--The Atlanta Journal & Constitution She had as much business keeping a stray dog as she had walking across Egypt--which not so incidentally is the title of her favorite hymn. She's Mattie Rigsbee, an independent, strong-minded senior citizen, who at 78, might be slowing down just a bit. When young, delinquent Wesley Benfield drops in on her life, he is even less likely a companion than the stray dog. But, of course, the dog never tasted her mouth-watering pound cake....Wise witty, down-home and real, Walking Across Egypt is a book for everyone.

In 1963, at the age of 17, Dwayne Hallston discovers James Brown and wants to perform just like him. His band, the Amazing Rumblers, studies and rehearses Brown's Live at the Apollo album in the storage room of his father's shop in their small North Carolina town. Meanwhile, Dwayne's forbidden black friend Larry -- aspiring to play piano like Thelonius Monk -- apprentices to a jazz musician called the Bleeder. His mother hopes music will allow him to escape the South. A dancing chicken and a mutual passion for music help Dwayne and Larry as they try to achieve their dreams and maintain their friendship, even while their world says both are impossible. In The Night Train, Edgerton's trademark humor reminds us of our divided national history and the way music has helped bring us together.

"Wonderful...Clyde Edgerton tells us another of his lovely tall tales."--Los Angeles Times Book Review Listre, North Carolina, is jumping. The Sears twins, Ted and Ned, who run a Baptist college, have opened Nutrition House for overweight Christians. Meanwhile their Project Promise is busy matching the educationally disadvantaged with wayward youth who want to share their talents. Enter Wesley Benfield, a prime candidate for Project Promise, with a special place in his heart for Baptist songwriting, preaching, and a wide, iron-pumping girl over at the Nutrition House. The Lord only knows where Wesley will go from here...

In his eighth deliciously funny novel, Clyde Edgerton introduces us to the irrepressible Lil Olive, who's recently arrived at the Rosehaven Convalescence Center to recuperate from a bad fall. Lil longs to be back in her own apartment, and since her driver's license doesn't expire until her ninety-seventh birthday, she also longs to get back behind the wheel of her sporty '89 Olds. To pass the time until independence, Lil strikes up some new friendships. Mrs. Maudie Lowe and Mrs. Beatrice Satterwhite, who are laying bets on whether Clara Cochran's glass eye comes out at night. And L. Ray Flowers, the freelance evangelical preacher with fancy white hair who sings his sermons, strums a mean guitar, and aspires to an even higher calling. Keeping a watchful eye on them all is Carl, Lil's middle-aged bachelor nephew with a heart of gold and the patience of a saint. But soon Rosehaven is turned upside down and the outcome is anyone's guess. Lil and the girls steal a car and hit the highway. L. Ray's vision of a national movement to unite churches and nursing homes (Nurches of America) is embraced by the residents. And then there's Darla Avery's dirty little secret, which could spell the end for the visionary preacher. Edgerton looks at the challenges of aging with sympathy, sensitivity, and his trademark sense of humor. Like the bestseller Walking Across Egypt, this is vintage Edgerton: wise, wistful, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Essays in Rough South, Rural South describe and discuss the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward. In his seminal article, Erik Bledsoe distinguishes Rough South writers from such writers as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Younger writers who followed Harry Crews were born into and write about the Rough South. These writers undercut stereotypes, forcing readers to see the working poor differently. The next pieces begin with those on Crews and Cormac McCarthy, major influences on an entire generation. Later essays address members of both groups—the self-educated and the college-educated. Both groups share a clear understanding of the value of working-class southerners. Nearly all of the writers hold a reverence for the South's landscape and its inhabitants as well as an affinity for realistic depictions of setting and characters.

This novel set in North Carolina is “warmly humorous, gossipy, and rich―a book with the soul of a family reunion” (The New York Times Book Review). The Copeland family goes back a long way in North Carolina. Albert Copeland keeps a written record, of sorts, in some notebooks he bought back in 1956 to log the flights of his home-built floatplane. He embarked on that project when the kids were still little, but now they’re all grown: Thatcher has a son of his own; Meredith and Mark are back from Vietnam; and Noralee is off dating hippies. The notebooks are thick with the floatplane’s failures to lift off, and bulging with color Polaroids of the wisteria blossoms near the family plot, favorite family dogs, and Thatcher and Bliss’s wedding; records of Noralee’s height and weight; a diagram of the graveyard; a newspaper story about wild-child Meredith’s many backfired schemes. This novel travels back in time more than one hundred years, to the Copeland bride who first planted the wisteria by the back porch that would take over the surrounding woods, and then back to the present again to show how even though times change, people are pretty much the same. “Among the wisest, most heartfelt writing to emerge from the South in our generation . . . Meredith Copeland’s first-person account of his Vietnam experience, homecoming, and physical paralysis in North Carolina is breathtakingly stark, full, and real.” ―Los Angeles Times “The Floatplane Notebooks has all the marks of a master storyteller going straight for the mystery itself. All the marks, that is, of a new American classic.” ―The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “A wonderful celebration of family and tradition, with warts, humor, tragedy, and triumph . . . An exceedingly rich book, a celebration of the human spirit that is brilliantly conceived, structured, and executed.” ―The Cincinnati Post

After three decades of being a father, Clyde Edgerton-with four kids ranging in age from six to 30-is supremely qualified to give tips to dads of all ages. His fathering advice, pre-birth through schooling, involves plenty of his trademark humor, but also sound guidance enhanced by his training and experience as an educator. Papa Edgerton suggests that on occasion a father might forego reading and just point to the pictures of dogs and cats in baby books, and also that he might place a blanket on the lawn, lie on his back with the whole family, and watch Sky Television. Edgerton's humorous and helpful counsel will guide new parents on interacting with in-laws and coping with sleep deprivation, while also providing strategies for recovery after you've cursed in front of a mimicking baby. "If you don't feel apprehensive just before your first child is to arrive, you are abnormal," writes Edgerton. Yet by way of his experience, observation, and imagination, he provides caution and pure joy in equal measure. "Edgerton is so, so funny. He captures the rainbows, cheap thrills, and irritating potholes of parenting with splendid understatement."-Library Journal

Preston Clearwater has been a criminal since stealing two chain saws and 1600 pairs of aviator sunglasses from the Army during the Second World War. Back on the road in post-war North Carolina, a member of a car-theft ring, he picks up hitch-hiking Henry Dampier, an innocent nineteen-year-old Bible salesman. Clearwater immediately recognizes Henry as just the associate he needs -- one who will believe is working as an F.B.I. spy; one who will drive the cars Clearwater steals as Clearwater follows along in another car at a safe distance. Henry joyfully sees a chance to lead a dual life as Bible salesman and a G-man. During his hilarious and scary adventures we learn of Henry's fundamentalist youth, an upbringing that doesn't prepare him for his new life. As he falls in love and questions his religious training, Henry begins to see he's being used -- that the fun and games are over, that he is on his own in a way he never imagined.