New Appalachian Books: Write-Ups

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS Write-Ups George Brosi William E. Akin. West Virginia Baseball: A History, 1865-2000. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006. 229 pages with photos. Trade paperback. $29.95. William E. Akin, a professor of history emeritus of Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, takes readers on a journey to the sandlots of West Virginia. From the first "base ball" game in 1866 to the 1950s when the sport became less popular and to the 2000s when the game was revitalized, the book's pages are filled with photographs of players and fields. Belinda Anderson. The Bingo Cheaters. Charleston, WV: Mountain State Press, 2006. 189 pages. Trade paperback. $14.95. This is a collection of stories set in fictional Hope County, West Virginia, reminiscent of the author's own West Virginia home. Belinda Anderson is a frequent workshop leader in creative writing. "Her short, resonant stories ring in the mind." —Lee Smith. "Belinda Anderson writes with warmth and humor about people whose lives are both ordinary and extraordinary." —Denise Giardina. Tamara Baxter. Rock Big and Sing Loud: Short Stories from Southern Appalachia. Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2006. 158 pages with foreword by Robert Morgan. Trade paperback. $15.00. This book is the inaugural volume in the New Writers Series co-sponsored by the Department of English, Foreign Languages and Philosophy of Morehead State University and the Jesse Stuart Foundation. It is a collection of short stories. "Rock Big and Sing Loud is an impressive debut." —Chris Holbrook. "These stories take us to places we did not expect to go, and just when we think we have seen what is strangest, most absurd, most alien and outrageous, we recognize something of ourselves." —Robert Morgan. Andrew Chafin. Noble's Decision. Pounding Mill, VA: Henderson Publishing, 2006. 139 pages with preview of sequel. Trade paperback. $18.95. 101 This is the debut novel by the author of the memoir, Growing Up in Bloody Mingo, West Virginia. The protagonist is a young man who becomes an attorney and then watches his carefully constructed world turn up-side-down. The author is the Executive Director of the Cumberland Plateau Planning District Commission based in Lebanon, Virginia. Angie Cheek, Lacy Hunter Nix, and Foxfire Students, editors. The Foxfire 40th Anniversary Book: Faith, Family and the Land. New York, NY: Anchor Books, 2006. 512 pages with photos. Trade paperback. $17.95. For forty years high school students in Rabun County, Georgia's northeasternmost county, have been doing oral history work. They have persisted through thick and thin, even through the conviction and jailing of their founder, through the Foxfire Magazine and The Foxfire Book and then eleven more numbered Foxfire Books up to Foxfire 12 and several more books with different names as well. And this book testifies to the fact that they are still doing an outstanding job. Lenore McComas Coberly. Sarah's Girls:AChronicle ofBigUgly Creek. Athens, OH: Ohio Univeristy Press, 2007. 157 pages. Trade paperback. $14.95. This is a fictionalized account of the author's recent ancestors who lived in a remote section of the coalfields of West Virginia. "In Sarah's Girls, Lenore McComas Coberly demonstrates again her stunning gift for storytelling. With a deftness and an economy of language as true and as brave as the kinfolk she so sensitively portrays, Coberly transports us into their world." —W. P. Kinsella. Charles Davis. Angel's Rest. Don Mills, Ontario: Mira Books, 2006. 329 pages. Hardback with dust jacket. $21.95. When eleven-year-old Charlie's father is killed during the 1960s, his mother is taken into custody for murder and his blissful town, Angel's Rest, Virginia, is turned upside down. 102 Lacy Albert Coe, an old black man who has been living in the mountains his whole life takes Charlie under his wing, but soon becomes the victim of racial crime and injustice. The novel begins spinning into a tale of mystery when a Korean War veteran, Hollis Thrasher, becomes a murder suspect and Charlie begins receiving clues from a neighbor girl. Davis, a former law enforcement officer and soldier, skillfully brings together the themes of grief, hope, and love in this novel. Donald Davis. "Don't Kill Santa...