New Appalachian Books: Write-Ups

NEW APPALACHIAN BOOKS Write-Ups George Brosi with Beth Overbee Leonard M. Adkins. Wildflowers ofthe Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Birmingham, AL: Menasha Ridge Press, 2005. 264 pages with photos and index. Trade Paperback. $19.95. What a beautiful, helpful wildflower guide! Just glance at the top, bottom or right-hand edge of the book to find the color and then thumb through knowing the flowers are in order of seasonal blooming. The book opens up with a fabulous full-color, full-page photograph on the right page, and commentary on the left page. "In the ever-expanding pantheon of guidebook writers, Leonard Adkins reigns supreme. Wildflowers of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains is his latest regal effort."—John McCoy in the Charleston Gazette. Wendell Berry. Given: Poems. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. 147 pages with index. Hardback in dust jacket. $22.00. In one of the poems in this collection, "How to Be a Poet," Wendell Berry admonishes, "Stay away from anything/ that obscures the place it is in./ There are no unsacred places;/ there are only sacred places/ and desecrated places." Wendell Berry can say so much in so few words! This is Wendell Berry's first collection of new poems in ten years. It is divided into four sections: The first two sections, "In a Country Once Forested" and "Futher Words," both consist of mostly short poems, primarily reacting to news or statements made by others. The third section, "Sonata at Payne Hollow," is a play in verse featuring the voices of the late Anna and Harlan Hubbard, homesteaders in the county adjoining Berry's Henry County, Kentucky, who he greatly admires. The last section is "Sabbaths 1998-2004." These are new poems which have grown out of Berry's Sunday walks. He has previously published Sabbath poems in books in 1987, 1992 and 1999, so this brings his Sabbath poems up-to-date. Wendell Berry tends organically with draft horses a Kentucky River farm. He is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and essays and is widely considered the preeminent contemporary Kentucky author. 100 Casey Howard Clabough. Experimentation and Versatility: The Early Novels and ShortFiction ofFred Chappell. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005. 182 pages with preface, notes, bibliography and index. Hardback in dust jacket. $35.00 Casey Clabough, who contributed an interview and some literary criticism to the Summer 2003 issue of Appalachian Heritage which featured Fred Chappell, here provides a thorough critical treatment of Chappell's early stories and his first four novels, It Is Time, Lord; The Inkling; Dagan, and The Gaudy Place. The book also includes an interview with Chappell and a previously unpublished story from the same period. This book is a must for any who would understand one of the region's most outstanding contemporary authors. Fred Chappell is a native of Canton, North Carolina, and a retired professor at UNC-Greeensboro, a prolific writer of poetry, short stories and novels, perhaps best known for Í Am One of You Forever (1985). Robert J. Conley. The Cherokee Nation: A History. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. 265 pages with index, appendices, photos and glossary. Hardback in dust jacket. $24.95. This is the first history of the Cherokee to be officially sanctioned by the tribal government and the first ever written by an enrolled member. Thus, the book is clearly essential to any library which wishes to include the Cherokee. It is also the first single-volume history in over forty years. Each chapter ends with a "Source List and Suggestions for Further Reading" and a glossary, thus attempting to be useful not only to those unfamiliar with the subject, but also to those who wish to delve deeper. Conley is blessed with an engaging, conversational style, but he not only lacks scholarly substance, he also tends to be quite old-fashioned in favoring the kind of history which pays more attention to the chiefs than to the lives of ordinary people. Conley lives in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and is the author of thirty-four novels about the Cherokee people. William E. Ellis. A History of Eastern Kentucky University: The School of Opportunity. Lexington...