Books

by Mary Beachum

Earthly Pleasures
by Karen Neches
Simon & Schuster 2008

Earthly Pleasures is a fantasy-romance that begins in a very unearthly place—the afterlife. It is the place where everyone ends up, no matter what their life or beliefs, a kind of benignly techy celestial theme park where all of the residents have Wishberry computers to satisfy their needs. Old souls and new souls wait for an earthly life or, even better, a promotion to guardian angel. Meanwhile they staff the desks of an otherworldly bureaucracy administered by a kindly female Supreme Being, affectionately called the S.B., and eavesdrop on the folks below. Sometimes the guardian angels try to intercede in their lives, “screaming at the top of their lungs, so as to be heard over their clients’ ceaseless internal dialogue. They’re competing with thoughts of self-doubt, worry and judgement.”

Meanwhile back on the planet, where life is hard and gratifications are not instant, some twisted plots are developing. Ryan Blaine, once a wealthy lady’s man, is coping with a failing relationship. His wife, recovering from a serious auto accident, seems so different from the woman he fell in love with. Two states away, in Birmingham, a woman lies in a persistent vegetative state in a nursing home, and her new roommate takes on a mission to get through to her. And in Heaven, Skye Sebring, a greeter in the Hospitality Sector, finds herself drawn to Ryan with a powerful force that hints she might be tied into the earthly issues in some significant way. Is the space between them impossible to span? Well, this is a romance, after all.
Augustan Karen Neches is also known to her readers as Karin Gillespie, the author of the popular Bottom Dollar Girls books. On her website  (www.karenneches.com/events) she talks about her desire to write a book that would bring a little laughter to the reader, and also about the lessons she built into the narrative. “Skye learns that everything one needs to know for a successful life on earth is contained in the lyrics of five Beatles songs…”

“Let it Be.” Don’t struggle against life and its circumstances.

“Help!”Ask and you shall receive.

“I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends.” You’re never alone in your life.

“Do You Want To Know a Secret?” Listen to your wise, quiet voice.

“Love Is All You Need.” Make love-based decisions.

Elvis Takes a Back Seat
by Leanna Ellis
B&H Publishing 2008

On a steamy summer day, three women set out on a road trip from Dallas to Memphis. They are in a vintage 1959 Cadillac convertible with the top down and a large ceramic bust of Elvis seat-belted into the back seat. Claudia is a young widow unable to shake off a debilitating grief, Ivy a troubled teenager and Rae an older woman in the process of rebuilding long-broken family ties. They have a strange mission—to return the bust of Elvis that Claudia’s late husband Stu had acquired in a mysterious way many years before. They have no idea exactly how to find its original home. Their only clue is a disjointed note left by Stu after the cancer and chemotherapy had confused his brain. The note refers to Faithland and they wonder if he meant to say Graceland. Rae is their uncertain guide, having lived in Memphis and known Elvis 40 years before, in the early ’60s.

Along the way, they discover that their impulsive journey is really a pilgrimage of sorts, and the unwieldy visage of an iconic hero destroyed by material success is the receptacle of their repressed disappointments, mistakes and hurts. Ivy is the child of Claudia’s boss and good friend whose mother abandoned their family when she was three. Rae is her aunt who moved back into town after 30 years of following her wild heart. They think they know each other, but on the pilgrim highway, they begin to reveal themselves, at first tentatively, and then with dramatic force as painful truths are unburied. When Claudia finally comprehends how much of her self she had sacrificed to create a happy marriage, she says “I realize now, sitting in the hotel bed all alone, that I’ve tamped my anger down into a black hole in my heart.”

This is a soul journey, after all, so it would not be giving away any surprises to note that these three engaging women discover that redemption and reconciliation may be found when Faithland and Graceland are the destinations—and that the challenging journey will always continue. As for the bust of Elvis, its journey will also continue.

The Revolutionary War in the Southern Back Country
by James R. Swisher
Pelican Publishing 2008

In the winter of 1779-80, the British forces, frustrated at the stalemate in the northern colonies, decided to carry the war to the South. Their plan was to capture Georgia and the Carolinas in order to threaten Virginia from another direction. The British command was falsely confident that a successful show of force in the South would result in the widespread enlistment of Tories throughout the region and support of Tory families in provisioning the troops. They faced a small, but dedicated rebel army and a large unpredictable force of frontier backwoodsmen who were “almost impossible to discipline, but could prove terrible, violent and effective soldiers if properly motivated.” It was a fateful clash, fought by relatively small groups of men over the vast, sparsely settled lands of the Piedmont South, with an outcome that was uncertain until General Cornwallis made his last mistake at Yorktown in 1781.

James Swisher is a gifted amateur historian who provides a lively overview of the Southern campaigns. He makes no attempt to provide a comprehensive social, political or economic history of the time, but instead focuses on the battles and campaigns and on the personalities of the commanders of the forces. He begins with the story of Colonial campaigns against the Native Americans, especially the 1776 destruction of all of the Cherokee villages in Tennessee and North Carolina; contending that these actions gave the Colonial militias indispensable practice in organizing their forces.

Each battle is given its own chapter with a detailed military description of the confrontation, with drawings, and of the fighting units and the men who led them. He brings these personalities to life, noting that General Daniel Morgan, who conceived the best American fighting strategy, carried on his back the scars of 499 lashes from a British whip. He is impartial in his views, quoting the British General Clinton, on the outskirts of Charles Town, as remarking “that it seemed absurd, impolitic and even inhuman to burn a town that you mean to occupy.” Yet he does not spare his condemnation of cavalryman Banastre Tarleton, who was regarded by all Colonials as an evil brute.

Because Swisher concentrates on the major events of the Revolution in the upcountry South, he spends little time on the smaller battles around Augusta and less well-known leaders like Elijah Clarke. Still, The Revolutionary War in the Back Country is an interesting tool for understanding a key time in our area’s history.