By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune Columnist
What are the books you are reading that are by Kentucky authors or about the Bluegrass State? I always have a pile of the same sitting next to me in my study I’m using them for reviews I do for Kentucky Monthly, researching for articles, or simply reading for personal enjoyment (sometimes all three). This week, I’ll share synopses of a few published recently and mostly hold off on my opinions.
Ellen Hagan has written a young adult poetic narrative about a fledgling seventh-grader navigating the often challenging middle school experience, both in-school and outside. The 309-page book, Reckless, Glorius, Girl (Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2021), is told in authentic kid language, first-person by Beatrice “Bea” Miller, who experiences her life transition in the west-central Kentucky town of Bardstown.
At home, there’s a vigorous and interesting interplay between Bea, her protective mother, and her cool grandmother, who is all about seeking adventure and hoping to pass it to her granddaughter. At school and beyond, with slumber parties (be sure to bring your iPad), important shopping trips (Mamaw loves vintage), puberty, Bea’s crush on Rodney and not Liam, and a lunchroom catastrophe, navigating the seventh-grade year is a wet road filled with potholes, though sometimes the splashes are fun.
Author Hagan has received numerous writing awards and landed grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts. She lives with her family in both Kentucky and New York City.
Silas LaMontaie (Black Rose Writing, 2019) is a coming-of-age novel written by Lawrence Weill, a resident of the west Kentucky community of Kuttawa, in Lyon County. The story begins in a south Louisiana town, and young Silas sees Daddy implicated in the mysterious arson of the sugar mill there. The family moves to Kentucky in the Lyon County area, with many in the Louisiana community thinking the reason was to escape consequences for LaMontaie’s deed at the mill.
Weill then takes the reader through Silas’s early life to adulthood stages, including his relationship with a person he calls “the beautiful and enigmatic Jessie May,” a young girl he meets who rescues him from bullying boys when she throws dirt clods at them, causing the perpetrators to give up the assault. In time, Silas takes to learning how to play and write music — lessons from his talented father — and his craft proves quite advantageous.
A classic and perhaps the most discussed book of the iconic Kentucky writer, Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men, now has a book written to discuss it much more deeply. James Perkins, along with Patrick McCarthy and Frank Allen, has released Black Jack Burden? Night Thoughts on the Genetics of Race in Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men. It is a scholarly work, and if I might add a thought, it is likely one that the strongest followers of Penn and/or All the King’s Men — those looking for highly nuanced information on such — would find of particular interest.
Black Jack Burden? deals with the issue of Jack Burden, the Kings Men narrator, and who his true father might be. The authors accentuate what they term “close reading” and genetic science to look at the issue. Appendices in the book cover in A, is a short story “included in the belief that criticism can be fun, and that one form of criticism is a new work of art.” Appendix B has a chronology “within and surrounding” of All the King’s Men that are “among the events in the novel and developments in genetics and racial laws.” A demonstration of narrative perception of African Americans in Penn’s book is in the C appendix.
In The G-men and the Heiress, author William E. Plunkett writes the 1934 kidnapping of wealthy Louisville socialite Alice Stoll by Thomas Robinson, Jr., who received a $50,000 ransom. He and “a newly-found companion lavished the money across the country.” The story didn’t end with his capture; perhaps it just got started, and there are plenty of details throughout to ponder the totality of the proceedings.
Waiting in line for me to read are the following: Murder in Old Kentucky: True Crime Stories from the Bluegrass, along with Murderous Acts: 100 Years of Crime in the Midwest, both by Richmond author Keven McQueen; On the Wings of Words Given: Faith, Family, & Kentucky Life, by Christian writer Linda Hawkins; Leah’s Path (a part of the Leah Anne series), by Tim Callahan; and Masquerade and Murder at the Bourbon Ball, by Scarlett Dunn. Additionally, Louisville author Bill Noel has turned out his nineteenth novel in the Folly Beach Mystery series, this one called Tipping Point.
Maybe one or two of the titles will garner your interest and you’ll want to pick them up. If so, let me know what you think after you read them. I’ve always thought we possess an impressive literary landscape in Kentucky, worthy of enjoying and sharing.
