This volume collects some of the best-loved works by award-winning Southern columnist and author Celestine Sibley. Favorite writings from Sibley's rich and varied career will take you straight into a world of lively and unforgettable characters, both real and fictional. Her words, whether about politics, family, gardening, food, or murder, are sure to lead you down an unexpected path where you feel right at home. Ten of Sibley's friends and best-known fans have provided entertaining introductions to each section of the book. They celebrate her charm, wisdom, and sparkling good humor.
The stories here take place on Southern soil. But their themes and their characters are as universal as Christmas itself. They're the kinds of stories that families and friends will cherish and read aloud to one another every holiday season - year after year. One of the joys of Celestine Sibley's writing is the people she tells us about. That's because "Celestine's People," whether fictitious or otherwise, are always real - the kind of individuals you'd like to sit down with and have a long conversation. This has never been truer than with the characters who populate Christmas In Georgia. Take for example, sightless Mrs. Tippen: "She was a funny looking old thing in her bunchy black clothes, hopping about on the doorstep like a tame crow, but she was good." And there is Mrs. Tippen's friend, ten-year-old Sukey Hart, who knew how to do almost everything - from spinning and weaving to speaking perfect Cherokee - except how to keep her young heart from listening when she heard a wounded Tory soldier tell about his Christmases back in England before the Revolutionary War. There's no one you'll remember more than Henry Grady Huckaby, who, out of love for his sick brother, accidentally saved Christmas for his entire family. Or take cranky, rheumatoid-ridden Gramp Stanton, who makes Christmas come, even to Snout Island. Or get to know adolescent Araminta Morley, who, though "just the age to be cynical, even at Christmastime," will touch your heart and fill you with the holiday spirit. The stories here take place on Southern soil. But their themes and their characters are as universal as Christmas itself. They're the kinds of stories that families and friends will cherish and read aloud to one another every holiday season - year after year.
Mothers are always special. AND IN HER BOOK by that name, Celestine Sibley tells us why. But don't expect to find only silver-haired saints and paragons of maternal virtue in this volume. The women (and sometimes men) Celestine writes about are honest people confronting everyday problems. They are frequently strong-willed, occasionally unorthodox, and generally free-spirited people who do the best they can with what's at hand. And they always do it with a tremendous sustaining power of love. In Mothers Are Always Special, you'll meet people like Sarah McClendon Murphy, who opens her arms, her home, and her heart to hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children. You'll meet courageous Montell Purcell, who--when told her five-year-old daughter must lose her sight or her life--waits out the doctors and their diagnoses until a miracle occurs. You'll be introduced to Joe and Horace, an unlikely pair who correct, cajole, protect, and mother a brood of five boys after their parents' deaths, and who do so as lovingly as any woman could. And you'll never forget doelike Cora Purefoy, the sixteen-year-old mountain woman who mistakenly sells her baby and then fights to get him back. With such stories, Celestine Sibley reminds us that no matter what the age, sex, or background of the person who loves a child, Mothers Are Always Special.
As the seasons pass, we go from the moss-draped banks of Mobile Bay to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We take part in the celecbrations of the year - Thanksgiving, New Years Eve, the Fourth of July. This is the celebration of life.
It has been a while since Atlanta reporter Kate Mulcay paid a visit to the house she and her late husband built on a tiny, isolated island off the coast of Florida. But when a good friend from the island calls to report an attempt on her own husband's life, Kate sets out to find a killer.
A Place Called Sweet Apple is your personal invitation to a cozy retreat in a very special spot. Sweet Apple-the very name evokes a rural charm. That's what Celestine Sibley discovered on her initial visit to the primitive log cabin built in 1844. And that's what she continued to find after many years living in the house, lovingly restores and filled with the memories of her own family's life there. "How an old abandoned house can take hold of a reasonably sane woman's heart, fill her mind, lap up her energy and change her life is still something of a mystery to me," Sibley muses. By the time you have savored her tale of restoring the old house, Sweet Apple's charm will no longer be a mystery. The dilapidated ruin into which Sibley invested her heart and energy became a community project and Sibley and her family grew to love the colorful and interesting lifestyle of their neighborhood. This is far more, however, than a story about breathing new life into an old house and moving from the city to the country. It is a story of personal discovery and fulfillment laced with wry humor and good common sense. Sibley's vision of living and loving is so clear, so pure, that no reader can put down this book without feeling enriched. The sampling of Southern recipes that she has collected here are also certain to delight.
Always on the lookout for a good story, reporter Kate Mulcay schedules an interview with an Atlanta legislator impassioned over a border dispute. But Representative Pickett's trailer is empty when she arrives, and a trail of blood leads into the woods. When another legislator disappears, Kate has a catastrophe on her hands. . . .
Sally McMillan is horrified when her youngest daughter's marriage, apparently a happy one, dissolves amid claims of child abuse and bitter recriminations
This volume collects some of the best-loved works by award-winning Southern columnist and author Celestine Sibley. Favorite writings from Sibley's rich and varied career will take you straight into a world of lively and unforgettable characters, both real and fictional. Her words, whether about politics, family, gardening, food, or murder, are sure to lead you down an unexpected path where you feel right at home. Ten of Sibley's friends and best-known fans have provided entertaining introductions to each section of the book. They celebrate her charm, wisdom, and sparkling good humor.
It has been a while since Atlanta reporter Kate Mulcay paid a visit to the house she and her late husband built on a tiny, isolated island off the coast of Florida. But when a good friend from the island calls to report an attempt on her own husband's life, Kate sets out to find a killer.
Mothers are always special. AND IN HER BOOK by that name, Celestine Sibley tells us why. But don't expect to find only silver-haired saints and paragons of maternal virtue in this volume. The women (and sometimes men) Celestine writes about are honest people confronting everyday problems. They are frequently strong-willed, occasionally unorthodox, and generally free-spirited people who do the best they can with what's at hand. And they always do it with a tremendous sustaining power of love. In Mothers Are Always Special, you'll meet people like Sarah McClendon Murphy, who opens her arms, her home, and her heart to hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children. You'll meet courageous Montell Purcell, who--when told her five-year-old daughter must lose her sight or her life--waits out the doctors and their diagnoses until a miracle occurs. You'll be introduced to Joe and Horace, an unlikely pair who correct, cajole, protect, and mother a brood of five boys after their parents' deaths, and who do so as lovingly as any woman could. And you'll never forget doelike Cora Purefoy, the sixteen-year-old mountain woman who mistakenly sells her baby and then fights to get him back. With such stories, Celestine Sibley reminds us that no matter what the age, sex, or background of the person who loves a child, Mothers Are Always Special.
The stories here take place on Southern soil. But their themes and their characters are as universal as Christmas itself. They're the kinds of stories that families and friends will cherish and read aloud to one another every holiday season - year after year. One of the joys of Celestine Sibley's writing is the people she tells us about. That's because "Celestine's People," whether fictitious or otherwise, are always real - the kind of individuals you'd like to sit down with and have a long conversation. This has never been truer than with the characters who populate Christmas In Georgia. Take for example, sightless Mrs. Tippen: "She was a funny looking old thing in her bunchy black clothes, hopping about on the doorstep like a tame crow, but she was good." And there is Mrs. Tippen's friend, ten-year-old Sukey Hart, who knew how to do almost everything - from spinning and weaving to speaking perfect Cherokee - except how to keep her young heart from listening when she heard a wounded Tory soldier tell about his Christmases back in England before the Revolutionary War. There's no one you'll remember more than Henry Grady Huckaby, who, out of love for his sick brother, accidentally saved Christmas for his entire family. Or take cranky, rheumatoid-ridden Gramp Stanton, who makes Christmas come, even to Snout Island. Or get to know adolescent Araminta Morley, who, though "just the age to be cynical, even at Christmastime," will touch your heart and fill you with the holiday spirit. The stories here take place on Southern soil. But their themes and their characters are as universal as Christmas itself. They're the kinds of stories that families and friends will cherish and read aloud to one another every holiday season - year after year.
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