In 1939, a sweet-talking, blackhearted Irishman works an isolated Georgia town into a ferment with his visions and wild schemes in quest of a legendary cache of money.
When Cooper Coghlan arrives in Ireland with his grandfather's remains he has one instruction: let my ashes blow in the wind. You'll know the place when you come to it. I'll be there, telling you. Mesmerized by his romantic vision of Ireland, Cooper begins his search with the unknowing help of friends and an Irish stranger named Kathleen
Revolving around the electrification of rural northeast Georgia shortly after the end of World War II, the novel has become a classic coming-of-age story. Kay, now an acclaimed writer with an international following, has reread the novel with the eyes of a seasoned storyteller. Cutting here and adding there, Kay has enriched an already highly comical and poignant work.
The author of "To Dance with the White Dog" returns with a powerful novel of family and justice, set in the rural Deep South in the fateful days after World War II. Regional signings and tours.
In the sleepy town of Tickenaley, Georgia, they call the thirty minutes between day and night Dark Thirty. The memory of daylight lingers, but falling darkness brings with it haze, change and uncertainty. One day at Dark Thirty, Jesse Wade, in high spirits, carrying a birthday gift for his beloved grandson, returns home to a scene of unspeakable horror. His entire family—wife, children, grandchild—have been savagely slain. In one slashing moment, the life of this decent, loving, home-rooted man is torn apart forever. Not since In Cold Blood has a book probed so deeply and so powerfully into the human drama that a senseless act of savagery leaves in its wake—the agony of Jesse Wade, the panic of the townspeople, the burden of the lawyers who must defend the killers, and the encroachment of the news media, exploiting it all. As the story unfolds, Terry Kay also dramatically brings to light the complex social issues we all face in a violent time: justice vs. vengeance, the failings of our legal system, capital punishment. In this beautifully written, deeply felt novel, Terry Kay chillingly juxtaposes the pastoral beauty of Appalachia and the traditional values of small-town America with the spreading stain of evil that threatens us all. “Terry Kay plunges deeply into the complex and maddening question of justice and emerges with a work whose qualities are those of true art: the capacity to remain in the reader’s mind, vexing him, illuminating him, and making him part of a human situation he cannot ignore.” —James Dickey, author of Deliverance
In the summer of 1955, Madison Lee "Bobo" Murphy was a waiter at the Catskills' Pine Hill Inn. A rural Southerner, he had never heard the word meshugge until Avrum Feldman -- a retired New York City furrier -- became his unlikely friend. For Bobo, nothing about that special time and place ever lost its glow: Avrum's obsession with the haunting voice of a famous opera diva, music that no one else could hear; the exotic mingling of Yiddish and German in the dining room; and the girl he met and loved. In everyone's life, Avrum claimed, there is one grand, undeniable moment that never stops mattering. For Bobo, it was his first glimpse of beautiful Amy Lourie. But, for a wealthy Jewish girl and a Georgia farm boy, the summer had to end, leaving Bobo with the pain of lost love. Nearly forty years later, his children grown and marriage comfortably routine, Bobo comes north once more; there, amidst the haunting hints of Amy's presence, she unexpectedly appears. Nothing has dimmed the passion of their youth, yet two lifetimes and a thousand Catskills sunsets stand between who they were and who they have become. The barriers between them are different now. But mysteriously, miraculously, Bobo reawakens the dream of a love larger than himself....
When Foster Lanier and Ben Phelps are released from a professional baseball team in 1904, it is the only experience they have in common, until they meet a runaway -- a girl-woman named Lottie Parker -- on the train that takes them from Augusta, Georgia, and away from their dreams of greatness. Foster will marry her and father her son. Ben will escort her home. And Lottie will change the lives of everyone she meets, from the day she runs away until she finally finds the place where she belongs.
In this “hauntingly beautiful story about love, family, and relationships,” a mysterious dog helps an elderly man in his final days (Archbishop Desmond Tutu). After Sam Peek’s beloved wife Cora dies, his children are worried about him. After fifty-seven years of marriage, they are unsure how their elderly father will survive on his own. They talk about him as if he can’t hear them, questioning how he’ll run a farm, drive his truck, or live by himself. When Sam tells his children about a white dog who visits him, yet seems invisible to everyone else, they are sure that grief and old age have taken a toll on their father. But, real or not, the creature soothes Sam’s grief and ultimately reconciles him with his own mortality. In this bittersweet story of love, grief, and coming to terms with death, “master storyteller” Terry Kay takes readers on Sam’s journey with his white dog, bringing solace and comfort to the inevitable transition that all must make (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
A lyrical and poignant novel from one of America's greatest storytellers, the author of To Dance with the White Dog. On a sunny summer day in 1948, Noah Locke arrives in Bowerstown, a small North Carolina community bordered by lakes and set deep in the Valley of Light. A quiet, simple man and a war veteran, Noah has a mystical gift for fishing, yet he remains haunted by the war and by the terrible scenes he witnessed when his infantry unit liberated Dachau. His wandering—doing odd jobs and catching fish for sale or trade—is both an escape from his past and a search for a place to call home. In the valley, Noah is initially treated with amusement by the locals he meets at Taylor Bowers's general store—until he begins fishing. Once they see his almost magical skills, however, he becomes the talk of the valley and is urged to stay long enough to participate in the annual school fishing contest. He agrees, accepting a job offer by Taylor to paint his store when he isn't filling orders for fish. He finds lodging in an abandoned shack by a small lake the locals call the Lake of Grief and, also, the Lake of No Fish, because they think all the fish have disappeared. Noah knows they are wrong. Beneath the water is a warrior bass waiting to test Noah's gift. In the way that innocence creates powerful events, Noah meets Eleanor Cunningham, a young widow whose husband supposedly killed himself after returning home from the war. Over the course of a week, Noah will be led into the secret lives of the residents of the Valley of Light, will join them as they mourn a tragedy, and will experience a miracle that will guide him home at last. Luminous, memorable, and deeply moving, The Valley of Light is the finest work to date from a brilliant storyteller.
Jesse Wade returns home to find his wife, children, and grandson murdered, and he and his small southern town enter a time of panic, controversy, legal maneuvering, and media exploitation
When Asa Holbrook Staggs stepped into the cold-water spring that would later bear his name, he was drunk. The date was November 18, 1914. He pulled himself from the water, sober, cold and converted to a new life in the Lord. And thus began the legend of Asa¿s Spring, a pool indiscriminately dispensing favoritism to those who believed (or wondered about) the curative power of its water. These are stories of people born in Cuttercane, Georgia, the place of Asa¿s Spring, and who earned minor celebrity from the townsfolk¿s highest praise: ¿He (she) is something else, ain¿t he (she)?¿ The ¿something else¿ is what a Southerner might call a catchall phrase, for it can apply to saint and sinner alike. It means exactly what it implies: the person referenced has made a name for him (her) self in some manner ¿ Asa, the drunk, becoming a war hero; the reigning heavyweight lard watermelon champion and Indian terror, Newell Proudfoot, in a grudge match against the Prichard twins; Felton Eugene Weaver¿s rise from whiskey runner to Hollywood movie fame; Elmo Parker and Monroe Dawson in a showdown baseball game between the Claybank Textile Tigers and the Jefferson Bluejays; and, last, the stunning Mattie Mae Blair¿s career as the strip-tease artist, Princess Salome. Written in the edged-in-humor style of caricature, these stories are shared daily in cafes and other gathering spots in rural communities in the South. It is a practice embedded in the culture, and all it takes for a casual mention to become a tall tale is one storyteller trying to outdo another. If you find yourself in the company of such men and women, pause nearby and eavesdrop. When the snickering turns into a cackle, you will know that someone has been elevated to being ¿something else.¿
In spring 1962, a young black girl is killed at a civil rights demonstration on a university campus in Atlanta. The next day a home in Georgia is burned. Both events are etched into the memory of Cole Bishop, eerily playing out the predictions of a former classmate named Marie Fitzpatrick. Cole and Marie are high school seniors when they first meet in fall 1954. He is a native-born Southerner accepting the traditions of segregation as a way of life. Marie is a recent transplant from Washington, DC, a brilliant and assertive nonconformist with bold predictions about a new world that is about to be ushered in by desegregation. The story revolves around the fiftieth reunion of the Overton High School class of 1955. The Book of Marie is the story of a generation'whites and blacks'who ignited the war of change. Yet, it is also as much about the power of place'the finding of home'as it is about the history of events.
When a young Jewish mailboy at a powerful bank is kidnapped, the bank refuses to pay the $1 million ransom, igniting a public debate. One of the city's wealthiest and most influential citizens begins a national campaign for Aaron's life--one that will lead to a stunning revelation.
Why would anyone kidnap a nobody like Aaron Greene? And who's going to pay to get him back? Terry Kay tackles significant moral dilemmas in his gripping new novel, which combines graceful, sensitive writing with an intelligent excursion into the state of our social consciousness.
When Arthur Benjamin steps from a Greyhound bus in Savannah, Georgia, he is immediately robbed by an affable street magician named Hamby Cahill. It is Hamby's first act of thievery and the remorse of it so overwhelms him that he finds lodging for Arthur in The Castle, a warehouse supposedly owned by Melinda McFadden, an eccentric and fragile grande dame of imagined aristocracy who is known as Lady to the strange assembly of street people she has arbitrarily selected to be her Guests. There, Arthur finds his family, an ex-con shoplifter, a disgruntled seamstress, a young artist suspected of being a hooker, and a former boxer known as Lightning. For Arthur, it is the company that will change his life, as he, in turn, will change the lives of everyone he encounters. Here, Arthur has found his place and his purpose.
Acclaimed writers, family, friends, and more pay homage to the celebrated Southern author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini. New York Times–bestselling writer Pat Conroy (1945–2016) inspired a worldwide legion of devoted fans, but none are more loyal to him and more committed to sustaining his literary legacy than the many writers he nurtured over the course of his fifty-year career. In sharing their stories of Conroy, his fellow writers honor his memory and advance our shared understanding of his lasting impact on literary life in and well beyond the American South. Conroy’s fellowship drew from all walks of life. His relationships were complicated, and people and places he thought he’d left behind often circled back to him at crucial moments. The pantheon of contributors includes Rick Bragg, Kathleen Parker, Barbra Streisand, Janis Ian, Anthony Grooms, Mary Hood, Nikky Finney, Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart, Ron Rash, Sandra Brown, and Mary Alice Monroe; Conroy biographers Katherine Clark and Catherine Seltzer; his longtime friends; Pat’s students Sallie Ann Robinson and Valerie Sayers; members of the Conroy family; and many more. Each author in this collection shares a slightly different view of Conroy. Through their voices, a multifaceted portrait of him comes to life and sheds new light on who he was. Loosely following Conroy’s own chronology, the essays herewith wind through his river of a story, stopping at important ports of call. Cities he called home and longed to visit, along with each book he birthed, become characters that are as equally important as the people he touched along the way.
Quelle valeur donnez-vous à une vie humaine ? Quelle valeur donnez-vous à une vie humaine ? Aaron Greene est coursier dans une banque d'Atlanta. Un matin, en allant à son travail, il disparaît. La piste du kidnapping est hautement improbable. Qui pourrait en effet vouloir s'en prendre à cet employé aux revenus très modestes et à la situation précaire ? Et pourtant la demande de rançon ne tarde pas à tomber. Les ravisseurs réclament 10 millions de dollars. Non pas à la famille d'Aaron, mais à la banque qui l'emploie. Bien sûr, la direction n'a aucune intention de payer pour ce salarié à peine visible dans l'organigramme. C'est compter sans l'habileté des ravisseurs : à travers les médias, ceux-ci vont dresser l'opinion publique contre l'établissement bancaire, qui, semble-t-il, n'accorde pas la même valeur à la vie d'un petit employé qu'à celle d'un dirigeant. Alors que la presse se déchaîne, que les avocats et autres conseillers en communication de la banque sont en alerte, Cody Yates, un journaliste mêlé malgré lui de près à l'enlèvement, et l'inspecteur Victor Menotti vont tenter de résoudre une affaire qui va se révéler beaucoup plus complexe qu'il n'y paraît. Avec ce thriller palpitant, construit comme une magistrale partie d'échecs, Terry Kay nous offre une magnifique réflexion, plus d'actualité que jamais, sur la valeur d'une vie humaine au temps du libéralisme sauvage et du capitalisme triomphant.
Dogs with red eyes, children with fangs, people disappearing.... Something odd was happening in the town of Anderson. The trip to the legendary burned-down church was supposed to be a typical, harmless adventure during the lazy summer of 1955. However, for Terry Kay and her older brother Ronnie, the trip marked the beginning of their heroic fate.
Haunted by memories of the Second World War, veteran Noah Locke impresses the locals of his new North Carolina lake community home with his near-mystical fishing capabilities and is drawn into the lives of his neighbors.
Provides insight into the unique relationship that exists between women and animals and includes contributions from Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, Jane Goodall, Temple Grandin, and Barbara Kingsolver.
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