Start off your week with a new book!Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke In his most autobiographical novel to date, James Lee Burke continues the epic Holland family saga with a writer grieving the death of his daughter while battling earthly and supernatural outlaws. Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter Fannie Mae dies suddenly. As he tries to honor her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals, and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight. Aaron’s only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted Horse, a no-nonsense woman who harbors some powerful secrets in her cellar. Despite the air of mystery surrounding her, Ruby is the only one Aaron can trust. That is, until the ghost of Fannie Mae shows up, guiding her father through a tangled web of the present and past and helping him vanquish his foes from both this world and the next. Drawn from James Lee Burke’s own life experiences, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood is a devastating exploration of the nature of good and evil and a deeply moving story about the power of love and family. Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach The summer before Sally Holt starts the eighth grade begins as a gloriously uneventful one. It's full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there. A rising senior and local basketball star, Billy has been an unending source of intrigue for both girls since he jumped off the school roof in fifth grade, and their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. By summer’s end Billy and Kathy are an item—an unthinkable stroke of luck that ends in an even more unthinkable tragedy. Set over the course of fifteen years, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is narrated by Sally as she addresses Kathy before, during, and after her death. We watch as Kathy’s absence creates a gaping hole that only Billy—now firmly off-limits to Sally—understands and might possibly begin to fill. Charting years of their shared history and missed connections, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is both a breathtaking love story between two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other, and a wry, sharply observant coming-of-age story that looks at the ways the people we love the most continue to shape our lives long after they’re gone. The First Populist: A Life of Andrew Jackson by David S. Brown A revelatory, timely, and masterful biography of President Andrew Jackson that offers a new perspective on this charismatic figure in the context of American populism—identifying the reasons for his unprecedented appeal as it shows us the man and politician in his full complexity. A number of bestselling and award-winning biographies have been written about the seventh president of the US, but none have positioned Andrew Jackson so firmly in the forefront of the country’s populist tradition. Now, historian David S. Brown traces Jackson’s unusual life and legacy and sheds new light on his place in our nation’s history, focusing on his role as a popular leader. Andrew Jackson rose from rural poverty to become the dominant figure in American politics between Jefferson and Lincoln. His reputation, however, defies easy description. Some regard him as the symbol of a powerful democratic movement that saw early 19th century suffrage restrictions recede for white men. Others stress his prominent role in removing Native American peoples from their ancestral lands, which were then opened to create a southern cotton kingdom, home to more than a million enslaved people. A self-defined champion of “farmers, mechanics, and laborers,” Jackson railed against the established ruling order, fostering a brand of democracy that struck a chord with the common man and helped catapult him into the presidency—he was the first westerner, first orphan, and thus far the only prisoner of war to occupy the office. Drawing on a wide range of research material, The First Populist takes a fresh look at Jackson’s public career, including the momentous Battle of New Orleans and the far-reaching Bank War; it reveals his marriage to an already married woman, a deadly duel with a Nashville dandy, and analyzes his magnetic hold on much of the country at the time. Presenting a full portrait of a controversial American life, The First Populist offers a new way to interpret Jackson’s legacy, connecting “Old Hickory” to a longer history of division, dissent, and partisanship that has come to define our current times. Comments are closed.
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