-
Love and Blood
A Review of Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit By Maud Lavin Morgan Talty’s novel, Fire Exit, is about ill fits among blood, belonging, and love. Set on the Penobscot River with the Reservation on one side and extraneous whites on the other, the story is also about parenting, about stepfathers raising kids with devotion, about missing…
-
Radical Softness
A Book Review of Exodus Oktavia Brownlow’s I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?: essays and Look at All the Little Hurts of These Newly-Broken Lives and The Bittersweet, Sweet,…
-
To Live Outside the Law, You Must be Honest
A Review of Chris Offutt’s Code of the Hills By Maud Lavin Chris Offutt’s latest novel Code of the Hills (Grove Atlantic, June 2023) is Kentucky noir, with a twist. Or two or three. Offutt delivers a dirty, dangerous, suspenseful, page-turning tale that takes us from the vengeful Kentucky hill country to the gun-ridden streets…
-
Biracial in the Pine Barrens
A Review of Davon Loeb’s The In-Betweens By Maud Lavin The In-Betweens (WVUP, 2023) is Davon Loeb’s memoir of growing up as a biracial boy mainly with his Black mother, stepfather, and half siblings in the Pine Barrens, along with some summers in a small town in Alabama with his Black cousins, and infrequent visits…