Booklist and Notes

Booklist and Notes George Brosi Berry, Wendell. Watch With Me and Six Other Stories ofthe Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Ne Quinch. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. 210 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $21.00. The title work of this collection is Berry's first novella. It, like all Berry's works of fiction, is set in the rural recesses near his fictional Port William, which bears considerable similarity to the farming community of Port Royal, Kentucky , where the author lovingly tends his own acreage organically with horses and where his forebears labored as well. This novella is told with abundant humor spicing the wisdom which has become Berry's literary trademark over a thirty-year career. It deals with the human relationships which fan out from the outrageous courtship and tender marriage of Ptolemy Proudfoot and Miss Minnie Quinch. The stories take place from 1908 until 1941. Cady, Jack. Inagehi. Seattle: Broken Moon Press, 1994. 258 pages. Trade paperback. $13.95. lack Cady served in the Coast Guard before entering the University of Louisville. By the end of the 1960s, he had begun to receive some recognition as a writer. The title of this novel comes from a Cherokee word for spirits that dwell in the Smoky Mountains. These spirits interact with Harriette Johnson, a woman of mixed Cherokee and European heritage who inherits a mountain and the knowledge that her father was murdered when her mother dies. Framed as a classical tragedy, complete with a chorus, this is a story of spiritual discovery which Publishers Weekly called "a [Joseph] Campbell soup mix of myth and legend that promises tension and doesn't deliver." Chafin, Raymond, and Topper Sherwood. Just Good Politics: The Life of Raymond Chafin, Appalachian Boss. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, George Brosi sells both new and out-of-print books through the mail and brings a display of booksfor sale to regional events. His address is Appalachian Mountain Books, Route 2, Whittier, North Carolina 28789. His phone number is 704-5865319 . 75 1994. 197 pages with an index. Illustrated with photographs. Hardback in dust jacket. $24.95. "You can vote independent if you want to, but as soon as you go to get something, well, you're not going to get it," opines Raymond Chafin, a master of politics whose career centered around his native Logan County in the heart of the West Virginia coalfields. Chafin was a leading player in lohn F. Kennedy's victory over Hubert Humphrey in the West Virginia presidential primary, a win which many see as a turning point in his campaign. And Chafin has been a force ever since. Chafin's frank and colorful autobiography is one of the most important contributions yet to a field which few have the courage to enter: the written record of the political shenanigans of the Southern Appalachians . Conley, Robert J. The Long Way Home. New York, Doubleday, 1994. 182 pages with a glossary. Hardback in dust jacket. $17.50. An established Cherokee writer, Conley embarked on the ambitious task of exploring the history of the Cherokee people in a series of novels. The previous four volumes dealt with the prehistoric Cherokee. This is book five of the Real People series, and it takes on a whole new dimension because it is here that people of European descent, those on Hernando de Soto's mission in the mid1500s , intersect the lives of the Cherokee. In The Long Way Home Conley allows the reader to see the dynamics of Cherokee society through the eyes of Deadwood Lighter, a Cherokee who was sold as a slave by other tribes and thus was able to travel with de Soto from Cuba. Lighter escapes in time to warn his fellow Cherokee of the arrival of de Soto, but is shocked to find a society dramatically changed from the time he was first captured. Dailey, Ianet. The Proud and the Free. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994. 322 pages. Hardback in dust jacket. $22.95. Ianet Dailey is one of America's most outrageously successful authors with over 150 million copies of her books in print! For this book she finds an almost ideal...