Southern Rock

In 1949, in spite of the odds against him, Navy Fireman 3rd Class Jericho Rhoades headed to a little town called Enterprise shortly before Christmas to meet the girl he’d fallen in love with—though she was promised to another.Would he have been so eager to get to Alabama if he’d known the secret things about himself would be revealed and he’d end up in jail for a criminal offense? Was she worth it?

There’s trouble in the land of cotton when a handsome hobo hops off a train bearing a sinister secret capable of ruining lives—including the pristine life of Lizzie Lancaster, a precocious young heiress. When the flirtatious Lizzie offers Kiah Grave a ride in her new Model A, her cousin warns her it isn’t right. What will townsfolk say if they see her picking up a vagrant at the tracks like a common chippy? Besides, Lizzie’s mother already has a beau picked out for her—Oliver Weinberger, the Senator’s son. But the daring Lancaster heiress has never bowed to protocol. Her quick ...

The Best and the Worst Concert Ever: Why The Warning is Awesome, is an essay about a concert that was, as the title says, the best, and yet the worst concert ever. From writer James J. Caterino. the author of Cool Stuff, Reviews and Essays, True Stories, True Stories 2, Escape to Nowhere, and much more.

Carly Dugan’s life took a drastic turn when her husband lost his arm in a tragic sawmill accident. Depression twisted this fun-loving, considerate man into a bitter and intolerable wreck. Their marriage is falling apart. But Julian has lost more than an arm. He’s lost his way. The old house is falling apart, yet he sits in a rocker all day, feeling like half a man. The meager savings in the sugar jar will soon be gone. When Carly gets a letter from a former neighbor inviting them to Alabama to live with her and her husband, even offering Julian a job in their feed store, Carly is sure ...

Castle Marlowe is an artist who travels to small South Alabama towns in 1914, preaching in rural schools, where he illustrates his sermons with chalkboard sketches. After his wife drowns, he finds it difficult to balance his responsibilities. How can he continue his ministry and take care of five children? An old-maid parishioner suggests her niece in North Alabama could be a great help to him. He assumes she’s suggesting marriage. Why not? The children need a mother and plenty of men marry mail-order brides they’ve never met. It would solve his problem. He sends money for the woman’s...

Ludie Graham Alexander didn’t want to believe the terrible things the landlord said about the man she married less than twelve hours earlier. However, when the facts became indisputable, Ludie realized she should’ve listened to her adoptive parents when they warned her against marrying someone she barely knew. Garth and Gracie Graham had disapproved from the start, but nothing or no one was going to stop her from being with the only man she’d ever loved. No one, that is, until the owner of a rooming house told her more about Schooner Alexander than she ever wanted to know. The awful ...

Bound to a homeless vagrant by invisible chains, Mandy Gafford longs to be set free from her wretched way of life, though steel shackles would be easier to break. She dreams of ways to escape her miserable existence - but she can’t - because he’s her daddy. He needs her. He said so. And as much as she wishes it wasn’t so, she supposes she needs him, also. As she and her shiftless father ride across Mobile Causeway after a major hurricane, Mandy stares at the gruesome destruction along the Alabama Gulf Coast. Never has she seen so many blue tarps, but it isn’t the tarps that trouble ...

With so much trauma in her past, a young widow with a teen-age son clings to the belief that things can only get better. She’s wrong. When the grandfather with whom they live brings a conniving, selfish woman into the house, they are evicted from the only real home they’ve ever known. Driving down an unfamiliar road at night, on the way to seek a new life, a deer darts in front of the car, causing her to wreck. She watches helplessly as the automobile goes up in flames. A gruesome-looking character shows up out of nowhere and takes them to his cabin in the woods. Finding a way of escape...

There was a time when everyone in Vinegar Bend assumed Ian Ludlow and Goose Marlowe would eventually marry. Apparently, everyone, that is, except Ian. Seven years ago, he packed his bags and left, with no plans to return until he could prove to the snobs in town that the Ludlow name was one to be reckoned with. Yet here he was again. Back too soon. But he never counted on a funeral. The Reverend Castle Marlowe has always faced adversity head on, and he’s certainly had his share. Folks have used words such as strong, committed, and trustworthy when describing him. But that was before a ...

Reverend Castle Marlowe is a famed chalkboard illustrator who has everything—a beautiful family, a lovely home and a ministry that he loves. Just as he begins to think he’s invincible, like leaves in a windstorm, his perfect life is suddenly swept up, blown away and turned upside down. Cass has always prided himself on his ability to counsel others and yet he now finds himself in a position of needing his own counselor. His family is treating him as if he’s an invalid. Christmas has always been his favorite time of year, but if things don’t improve, he may not stick around long ...

When the Chalkboard Preacher accompanies his friend to the Psychiatric Hospital to secure his wife’s release, the husband is horrified to learn she’s even more disturbed than when she was admitted. She fails to recognize him and clings to a doll she believes to be the baby they never had. Things go awry when an angry, domineering nurse sabotages the husband’s intent to take his wife home. Determined to free her and convinced the end will outweigh the means, the husband devises a plan that will ultimately involve his faithful friend, the Chalkboard Preacher. Would the Reverend Castle ...

Castle Marlow tosses and turns in his bed at night, pondering how to tell his wife he no longer wants to Pastor Community Faith Church. He longs to go back to doing what he feels the Lord has equipped him to do, which is Chalkboard Lecturing. Will Rebekah be willing for him to be gone from home for extended periods of time with so much drama going on in the family? Goat is intent on marrying a strange woman, Gazelle has come back home, Grandpa is acting most peculiar and then there’s the dilemma with Badger. Is it fair for him to run around the country doing what he loves best when she ...

In 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the 21st century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes. Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically.

At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she expected: her mother’s house. But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal...and uncovers a shocking family secret.

Camille Benrey buried her beloved husband the day after Christmas. She stood beside his grave as dirt was tossed over his casket. She went home to an empty house. She received tons of sympathy cards. She collected the insurance money. Newspapers far and wide had explicitly detailed the popular entertainer’s tragic death while riding his Harley, December twenty-third, along Deal’s Gap. Ian Benrey was dead. People said the Tail of the Dragon stole his life. But did it? Even if Camille could explain, what purpose would it serve? Who would believe such an absurdity?

Advised by a quack doctor in 1915 that her unborn child is at risk for lunacy, a wealthy woman pays a midwife to secretly switch her baby with the newborn daughter of a penniless couple. Twenty-one years later, when the horrifying truth is revealed in a Last Will and Testament, Harper Harrington is forced to swap places with Veezie, the rightful heir. The backwoodsy Veezie wastes no time booting Harper out of palatial Nine Gables. With no funds and nowhere to go, Harper moves into the rundown shanty that Veezie previously called home, in Goose Hollow, Alabama. But Harper soon discovers the ...

Will the Reverend Shepherd Jackson risk his God-given call for the love of a fallen woman? Veezie Harrington, a backwoodsy young woman with a seedy past, experiences difficulty fitting in to her new way of life after she inherits a wealthy estate in Alabama during the 1930’s. When she falls in love with handsome Shep Jackson, the local pastor, she sets a goal to overcome her redneck ways and become a real lady, worthy of the love of such a fine Christian man. Is the bar too high?Reverend Shepherd Jackson, a forty-year-old widower, causes an uproar in the church when he falls in love with ...

Mitch Blankenship has just stumbled on to the next big thing in country music. Expanding the family business from LA to Nashville was a huge part of meeting his personal goal of representing a Grand Ole Opry artist. And the sister duo he’s just found will get that ball rolling. Norah Hobert’s job is pretty easy and fun most of the time. Stylist and event planner for the Braden sisters gives her exposure to the exciting music industry and challenges that are usually interesting to figure out. To her dismay it looks like a fair bit of the fun might be taken away now that the duo is ...

For millions of kids, high school is a tumultuous time, with social highs and lows, academic pressure, and extracurricular wins and losses, but for the Little Rock Nine, the first African American students to attend a previously segregated high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, those years were nightmarish.

South Africa is under attack from all sides when Elanza, a politically connected heiress blinded by disease and looking for love before it is too late, meets a naïve English boy. Ralph, 18 and innocent, has accidentally stumbled upon Elanza - and South Africa’s biggest secret. When Ralph disappears into the darkest part of the continent to walk home overland, a Swazi spy, the only black African agent working for the apartheid-era National Intelligence Service, comes into both of their lives.