Never Say Calf Rope

If you liked Mark Twain's adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn you'll love the humorous, oftentimes exciting escapades of Jack Zorn and his two younger brothers growing up on their grandfather's farm in rural Thomaston, Georgia. It was during the depression years of the 1930's. Money was scarce. The Zorn boys were poor, but they didn't know it. Besides, everyone else was too. Later the author opens up his heart, and candidly reveals a close relationship to a father, plagued all of his life by an addiction to alcohol, and a grandson who provided joy, inspiration and humor.

DAWSON/NEVER SAY NEVER

Walnut Grove, the first of Rushing's six West Texas novels, is the story of John Carlile's passage into manhood when the century was young. His story is connected intimately to the growth of the town of Walnut Grove and to the good and evil that are always present. In those days cotton was taking the place of cattle, and farmers like John's father gambled that they could live off the soil. When a prolonged drought threatens to make the struggle hopeless, John's passionate attachment to the land is underscored by the fear that he might have to leave it. The establishment of the first school opens new horizons for John and also sharpens his sensibilities. The building of the railroad brings the greatest change of all. For some it means prosperity. But with the arrival of the work gangs come temptation, tragedy, and conflict, all touching John closely. On the very day that Walnut Grove celebrates the opening of a through line, a culmination of heroic and disillusioning events forces John to a crucial decision about his life and his future.

Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You is rich with the music of the Southern mountains and the stories of their people. In this novel from acclaimed author Fred Chappell, Jess Kirkman's grandmother is dying, and Jess remembers the tales she and his mother have passed down to him--a chorus of women's voices that sing and share and celebrate the common song of life.

"South Park, Houston, Texas, 1977, is where we first meet Ti' John, a young boy under the care of his larger-than-life father - a working-class rodeo star and a practitioner of vodou - and his mother - a good Catholic and cautious disciplinarian - who forbids him to play with the neighborhood "hoodlums." Ti' John, throughout the era of Reaganomics and the dawn of hip-hop and cassette tapes, must negotiate the world around him and a peculiar gift he's inherited from his father and Jules Saint-Pierre "Nonc" Sonnier, a deceased ancestor who visits the boy, announcing himself with the smell of smoke on a regular basis. In many ways, Ti' John is an ordinary kid who loses his innocence as he witnesses violence and death, as he gets his heart broken by girls and his own embittered father, as he struggles to live up to his mother's middle-class aspirations and his father's notion of what it is to be a man. In other ways, he is different - from his childhood buddies and from the father who is his hero. The question throughout this layered and complex coming-of-age story is will Ti' John survive the bad side of life - and his upbringing - and learn how to recognize and keep what is good"--