Summer Reading

I've always associated summer vacations with summer library reading programs. Browsing library shelves has introduced me to so many authors and subjects. To have the luxury of time to read as much as you want of whatever you want is what a holiday is all about. If I had to choose between virtual reading journeys or actual travel, reading might have the advantage, particularly when I consider coping with the summer heat and crowds.

Recently, I had an experience that brought the best of both worlds together. With fellow authors Bert Goolsby and Susan F. Craft, I went to Boone, N.C., for the third annual High Country Festival of the Book.

Boone is a lovely mountain community with stores featuring crafts, antiques, and excellent cuisine. Home of Appalachian State University, which has a most impressive campus, Boone offers many cultural experiences. While there, we met a family who brought their sons from Florida each summer to attend an orchestra workshop. In an outdoor amphitheatre above the town, the drama Horn in the West, depicting the lives of the area’s early settlers including Daniel Boone, has been presented since 1952.

A popular dining experience is going to the Daniel Boone Inn and Restaurant, now operating for over fifty years, where a set menu of home cooked meals is served family style with heaping plates of meats, vegetables, salad or soup, biscuits, dessert, and drinks brought to each table—so come hungry to have room for seconds! The Inn offers breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays.

For lunch, my companions raved over Melanie’s Food Fantasy and I enjoyed an excellent apple, walnut, and bleu cheese salad from Our Daily Bread. At dinner, we had wonderful spinach/artichoke appetizer with mountain trout, tilapia, and shrimp and grits at The Red Onion Cafe.

Watauga County Library

The festival itself took place at the Watauga County Library, a spacious, well-arranged facility on a hill just above the main street. The children’s area was created behind the walls of a castle with embedded shelves for books and items of interest.

Susan F. Craft, Bert Goolsby, and PGB

Authors and exhibitors set up in the conference room and under tents outside. Speakers and panels were presented in the Jones House Community and Cultural Center, a block away from the library.

Following is a list of some of the participating authors whose works sound intriguing for exploration:

Kaye Wilkinson Barley is author of the Southern novel Whimsey, which combines magic, fantasy, and humor and takes place in an artists’ colony on an island off the Georgia coast. I first met Kaye at Murder in the Magic City in Birmingham, Alabama. She served as webmaster, interviewer, and panel moderator for the High Country Festival of the Book.

Miriam Jones Bradley, a nurse, writes the Double Cousins mystery series for children and inspirational books for adults. Her husband, Dr. Bruce Bradley, accompanied her to the festival and helps with some of the graphics she uses in her books and presentations.

Sarah Martin Byrd’s beautifully illustrated book is called The Manger Mouse, which drew my attention because both Warren Bull and I have used that concept in our writing. Sarah’s was completely different and a lovely story for children.

Susan F. Craft writes historical fiction with hints of romance and suspense. Her novel, The Chamomile, which won the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick Award, takes place during the Revolutionary War in Charleston, South Carolina. Its sequels, tentatively titled Laurel and Cassia, are scheduled for publication in 2015. 

Shawn Crenshaw, graduate of the University of Alabama, husband, and father, writes inspirational texts about embracing the real you and finding your own authority. 

Jane Grimsley Edwards, author of Jelly Bean Finds Her Special Place, bases her children’s book on the true story of a lamb who became a symbol of hope for a community. 

Elysabeth Eldering has written short stories and the Junior Geography Detective Squad (JGDS), a fifty-state teaching series using mystery and trivia. 

Bert Goolsby, author and lawyer, sets his fiction in the Deep South of the 1940s through the 1960s. He often draws his plots from unique cases he has encountered. He also is the author of a book of devotionals for lawyers and judges.

Gretchen Griffith, who calls herself a “storycatcher,” writes about her own experiences, compiles oral histories, and prepares teachers manuals about life in the North Carolina mountains.

Regina Jeffers, having taught English for thirty-nine years in public schools in West Virginia, Ohio, and North Carolina, now writes the young adult Pride and Prejudice Mystery series, based on the characters in Jane Austen’s novel.

Sean Keefer, a lawyer, author, and musician from Charleston, S.C., writes legal suspense based in Charleston. His debut novel, The Trust, involves the probate of an unusual estate. His second novel is tentatively titled, The Solicitor.

Vicki Lane is the well-know author of Appalachian tales, including The Day of Small Things and the Elizabeth Goodweather Full Circle Farm Mysteries. She considers herself “new people,” having only lived in the mountains since 1975, but writes with great authority and empathy for the life there.

Richard Nance with daughter Rhonda Nance Roth writes the Hidden World Chronicles series, science fiction/adventure novels including: Journey of the Chosen, The Secrets of the Sword, and The Dragon Princess of Shambala.

Mike Orenduff, a former university professor and president, writes the Pot Thief novels that combine archeology, philosophy, humor, and mystery. His books have won the “Lefty” for best humorous mystery at Left Coast Crime, two “Eppies” for best eBook mystery of the year, and the New Mexico Book of the Year Award.

Debra Webb Rogers has taught dance at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts since 1986. Her first novel, Dancing in Time, written under the pen name Violet Rightmire, is a time travel love story set in the North Carolina mountains. She has written nonfiction about San Marco and Jacksonville’s Southside and a genealogy of Israel Boone’s descendants, The Boone Connection in the Lost Colonies.

Sandra Warren is a talented writer of children’s educational materials. When she heard the story of an Army Reserve nurse’s struggle for child custody, she wrote a gripping biography about a case that helped to change the law in this country.

 

Mystery Panel at Jones House with Vicki Lane, Sean Keefer, Kaye Wilkinson Barley, and Mike Orenduff

What are you reading this summer? Did you find it at the library?