Shadows Hold Their Breath
Shadows Hold Their Breath takes place with the backdrop of the 1970s feminist movement and in the final years of the Vietnam War. It tells the story of Kat Hunter, a woman who decides that the only way she can understand her unresolved grief and discover who she is meant to be is to do the unthinkable—the unforgivable. In October 1979, six years after suffering the loss of Beth, her dear friend and sister-in-law, to enemy mortar fire near the village of Quảng Ngãi, Vietnam, Kat begins to question everything about her traditional life. In the middle of the night, she slips away from her home in Lexington, Kentucky, her husband, and her three young daughters and boards a Greyhound bus with no specific destination in mind.
On the bus, she meets Molly, a young woman who reminds her of Beth. With nowhere else to go, Kat follows Molly and Molly’s boyfriend, Jake, to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Once there, Kat joins the artists community and guards the secret that she is married and has abandoned her children to the care of her husband.
Learn MoreOrder NowLeira Clara’s Flowers
In Leira Clara’s Flowers one little girl, Leira Clara, learns from her grandmother to love gardening and to share the happiness of gardening with others. Grandmother teaches Leira Clara that growing isn’t enough. “Flowers are to share,” Grandmother tells her. Leira Clara takes her advice to heart. When she returns to her flowerless yard at home, Leira Clara discovers that her parents do not garden because they believe they are too busy to grow and care for a garden. Leira Clara decides to take it upon herself to grow her own flowers and to share them with her neighbors and friends.
Learn MoreOrder NowThe Tillable Land
“The Tillable Land is a heart-racing, heart-breaking lyric, a liberating coming of age for our stunted relationship to all that feeds us. I am changed by this book.”—Rebecca Gayle Howell, Author of American Purgatory and Render/An Apocalypse and Poetry Editor, Oxford American
Learn MoreOrder NowThe Peacemakers
Fourteen-year-old Manny Weaver, a Mennonite boy living near Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1861, has a habit of biting off more than he can chew. The Weavers are Unionists and pacifists who do not wish to secede from the Union nor to participate in the fighting. In the past, Manny’s father and uncle have avoided militia service by paying a small fine, but when Virginia secedes from the Union, the payment is no longer accepted. Manny loves his family and would do anything to protect Father and Uncle Davy from being forced to join the Confederate army. That’s when his trouble begins!
Learn MoreOrder NowUnder the Ocelot Sun
Spoken by a mother to her small daughter as they are detained at a border wall, Under the Ocelot Sun is a powerful account of refugees’ plight. The mother speaks of the beauty of their Honduran homeland and of her abuela’s wisdom. She also touches on the violent forces they are fleeing. She wants her little one to know her heritage and why they have taken this perilous journey. Lyrically told (in English and Spanish) and vibrantly illustrated, this is a picture book for our time.
Learn MoreOrder NowCradled by Skeletons
Cradled by Skeletons: A Life in Poems and Essays is a raw expression of identity and place. This memoir relates Marta Miranda-Straub’s experience of trauma, resilience, and transformation. The book also portrays how her life’s work as a social worker, educator, leader, activist, advocate, and community organizer has been fueled by discernment, resistance, and transformation of individual, institutional, and societal systems of power.
Learn MoreOrder NowA History of Saints
A playful satire of the Great Recession, set in America’s quirkiest town.
During the recession, to keep from losing his home—the stately “Carolina Court,” in Asheville, North Carolina—Frank Reed becomes a reluctant landlord to a houseful of misfits. A New Age outpost in the South, Asheville has plenty of eccentrics, and Frank’s elderly tenant, Angus Saxe-Pardee, is the strangest of all. Taking charge of the household, Angus rents the last remaining rooms to two women: Andromeda Megan Bell’s arrival prompts chivalry and brings a stalking ex-lover to Frank’s home; and in Lida Barfield, the elegant enigma, Angus at last meets his match.
Learn MoreOrder NowNo Distance Between Us
“In this collection, Marianne Peel takes a reader on a journey of the heart—from Greece and Turkey to Nepal and China, from Ukraine to the US. With passion, curiosity, and a keen eye for detail, Peel introduces readers to places and lives that seem, on the surface, to be far removed from her own. These are people—loving, shattered, joy-filled, and oh so human—with whom Peel shares the intimacy of story, music, and dance. No Distance Between Us is indeed the message, not just for Peel in her travels, but for all of us who are transported with the poet.”—Laura Apol, author of A Fine Yellow Dust
Learn MoreOrder NowSmall Acreages
Small Acreages completes a trilogy of connected essays told in Georgia Green Stamper’s unique Kentucky voice. In Small Acreages, readers are returned to Stamper’s Eagle Creek world and its colorful characters, but her voice has both deepened with time and widened to include her journey beyond Natlee. Many of the essays in this new collection are reflective or as Stamper phrases it, she hopes “to add a handful of words to the ongoing conversation about what it means to be human.” Her wry humor endures, however, popping into even the most poignant of pieces, grounding her, cutting through the absurd as her daddy taught her to do, reminding her as her mother did that “you might as well laugh.”
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