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NON-FICTION Pure Heart: A Spirited Tale of Grace, Grit, and Whiskey by Troy Ball with Bret Witter. New York: Dey St., an imprint of HarperCollins, 2017. 267 pages. Hardback in dust jacket, $27.00. This memoir charmingly illuminates not just the life of the author, Troy Ball, an inspiring mother and entrepreneur, but also her adopted hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. She and her husband, Charlie, moved to Asheville from Texas over a decade ago. After twenty-four years of mothering three sons, two with special needs, she embarked upon a career making legal moonshine. She is the founder and principal owner of...

NON-FICTION  Thomas Wolfe and Lost Children in Southern Literature by Paula Gallant Eckard. Knoxville, The University of Tennessee Press, 2016.  213 pages with an index and works cited. Hardback with pictorial cover. $45. This book of literary criticism takes The Lost Boy by Thomas Wolfe as a jumping off place for considering seven other southern novels, with young characters, including four others from Appalachian Literature: Prodigals by Mark Powell,  On Agate Hill by Lee Smith, I Am One of You Forever  by Fred Chappell, and Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. The author has published books on Lee Smith, Bobbie Ann...

CHILDRENS Mommy Goose: Rhymes from the Mountains by Mike Norris with carved illustrations by Minnie Adkins.  Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016. 42 pages.  Oversized hardback with pictorial cover, $20 This is a remarkable, indeed quite unique book. The rhymes are from the mountains in the sense that the author, Mike Norris, is from Eastern Kentucky.  They are not traditional rhymes, though they are consistent with the spirit of folk rhymes. And Mike Norris is the father of Carri Norris, one of our outstanding contemporary traditional singers who is kin, on her mother’s side, to Lily Mae Ledford of the...

FICTION Bittersweet with Pearls to Ponder by Oleta P. Hinzman. Parsons, West Virginia: McClain Printing Company, 2015. 188 pages. Trade paperback, $14 This book begins with the author’s elegies for her husband, “a country preacher,” and one of her sons who died young.  Her “Pearls to Ponder “ are mostly in verse and are full of Bible quotes, manifestations of her deep Protestant faith.    Everyday Truth of a Rainbow Woman by Janet L. Furst.  Bloomington, Indiana: Balboa Press, a division of Hay House, 2016. 291 pages. Trade paperback. $19 This is an innovative novel told in the form of e-mails...

POETRYGalaxie Wagon by Darnell Arnoult. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2016, 67 pages, tradepaperback, $18.Darnell Arnoult was once called the Mary Kay of writer's workshops because of her willingness to lead writers in living rooms or any other venue. She teaches at Lincoln Memorial University and directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival each June. Her previous poetry collection, What Travels with Us, is the only poetry book to ever win a Weatherford Award as the year’s outstanding publication from Appalachia before Poetry became a separate category for the award. Her novel, Sufficient Grace, has been continuously in print since it was published ten years ago by Simon and...