Monthly Archives: May 2010

James Boyd. Marching On. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1927.

James Boyd followed up the success of his Revolutionary War novel, Drums, with this novel, set during the 1860s.

James Fraser, a descendant of the hero of Drums, is the son of a small farmer with land along the Cape Fear River.  Even as he sees that the cards are stacked against small landowners like his family, James falls in love with Stewart Prevost, the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner.  Frustrated in love and with his economic prospects, James goes to Wilmington.  Once the Civil War begins, James joins the Confederate army and becomes part of Stonewall Jackson’s army.  He is capture by the Yankees but is freed just as the tide of war turns in the North’s favor.  After making his way back home, he attempts to protect the Prevost plantation. In that he fails, but the war has both changed the Prevost family fortunes and their daughter’s opinion of James.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1920-1929, 1927, Boyd, James, Coastal Plain, Historical, New Hanover

Marie Beale. Jack O’Doon. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1894.

In this sad melodrama, Mercy Blessington, the daughter of a retired sea captain, must choose between two suitors.  One is Algernon Abercrombie, an artist, half serious about his work and a bit of a ne’er-do-well.  The other is a local fisherman, Jack O’Doon.  Jack is clearly the better person, but he is uneducated and Mercy is a cultured young woman who expects her husband to be cultured too.  Mercy’s good influence turns Algernon around, so that when Jack sacrifices his life to save Algie, it lessens the tragedy, if only just a bit.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1890-1899, 1894, Beale, Marie, Coast, Novels to Read Online

Paul Ader. The Leaf against the Sky. New York: Crown Publishers, 1947.

This is a classic coming-of-age novel.  The main character, John Perry, is the son of a Methodist minister.  Soon after his family moves to a new town, John strikes up a friendship with Milton Silverstein and Zona Cahill.  Zona is flirtatious and worldly; Milton is Jewish.  John’s father does not approve of his new friends.  Still, the friendships continue even after the trio goes off to college.  John intends to return to his small hometown one day to edit his local newspaper, but first he has to find his own way, struggling to break free of religious orthodoxy and develop his own opinions.  The college the friends attend is called Trumbull University, but is is easily recognizable as Duke. The mountain town which the friends leave and then return to is called Macon, but a contemporary reviewer thought it was actually Franklin, in Macon County.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 1940-1949, 1947, Ader, Paul, Durham, Macon, Mountains, Piedmont

Bob Boan. Bobby Becomes Bob. Kingsport, TN: Twilight Times Books, 2009.

As the title suggests, Bobby Becomes Bob is a coming-of-age story.  At twenty-eight Bobby Padgett has returned to his childhood home of St. Umblers, North Carolina.  Before the reader learns why he is back or what his mission there is, we follow Bobby as his mind flashes back to the experiences of his childhood – from his first broken bone to his first love, Sam.  He also recalls experiences such as finding a wallet on the sidewalk, working hard to pay for college, and twice avoiding the Army draft.  As he grew up, Bobby’s parents taught him how to be honorable, a gentleman; they also instilled in him strong family values.

Bobby was drafted for a third time and quickly sent to Vietnam. This altered the course of his life. On his second day in Vietnam, Bobby and his squad were captured. In captivity they were brutally and repeatedly tortured. When Bobby was rescued by American soldiers three and a half years later, he was a different person.  After spending months in Japan, Germany, and Washington, D.C. recovering, Bobby resolves to go by “Robert” or “Bob” from now on as a sign of his maturity.

When he finally returns to St. Umblers, Bob finds a street named in his honor, and Sam walks by him without recognizing her former flame. Bob realizes that his family and friends believe that he died in Vietnam, and that they have changed as much as he has. Although he plans to set the record straight eventually, Bob decides that this day would not be the day for his homecoming, and he returns to Washington.

Small-town North Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s is vividly portrayed in this novel.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Boan. Bob, Coastal Plain, Johnston, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Romance/Relationship

Tim Downs. Head Game. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.

Cale Caldwell didn’t plan on being a soldier, but an Army ROTC scholarship helped pay his way through UNC.  Before Cale could begin a job with an advertising firm in Chicago, the first Gulf War interrupted his plans.  Luckily for Cale, he served in the war with his good friend, fellow Tar Heel King Kirby.  The two young men worked with a seasoned veteran, Pug Moseley, in a psychological operations unit.  They were good at their work–creating pamphlets and other propaganda that encouraged the enemy to surrender rather than fight.  They saw some bad things, but nothing that they couldn’t leave behind.

Or so Cale thought. When the book opens, it’s now more than a decade later.  Kirby has just committed suicide, and Cale has come from Charlotte to New York City to help Kirby’s mom sort through his possessions. Cale is having a tough time himself.  His wife has died in a car accident, and his teenage daughter hasn’t been able to come to terms with her mom’s death. Unable to accept the story of Kirby’s suicide, Pug and Cale poke around in the past even as more bad things happen to Cale and his family in Charlotte.  Soon the men know that someone from their past is out to destroy them, and the hunter and hunted reverse roles as the novel moves to a dramatic conclusion.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Downs, Tim, Mecklenburg, Piedmont, Suspense/Thriller

Dara Girard. Words of Seduction. New York: Kimani Press, 2010.

When your last parent dies, you have to return home.  There are things to do–arrange a funeral, visit with family, sort through things, sell the family home. One thing that Suzanne Rand did not plan to sort through was her feelings for Rick Gordon.  Rick, a trade school dropout, had left Anadale, North Carolina a decade ago.  Much to everyone’s surprise, he made something of himself, building a successful business creating energy-saving devices.  Suzanne was expected to make good–the daughter of a judge, from a good family, married to an attorney. What no one expected was that she would air the town’s dirty laundry in a blockbuster novel.  Suzanne left town under a cloud when he marriage failed five plus years ago, now some see the novel as her revenge for the humiliation she suffered then.

But that’s then, and this is now. Suzanne only wants to sell her father’s house and get out of town.  Rick wants to buy the house but he seems to want more than just the Rand real estate–he wants Suzanne’s heart. Because Anadale is both Rick and Suzanne’s hometown, they each have family and a past there and those complicating factors add uncertainty and more tension to this love story.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Girard, Dara, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Romance/Relationship

Fern Michaels. Wildflowers: Sea Gypsy. Toronto: HQN, 2010.

After spending a few years working as a publishing editor in New York, Cathy Bissette wants a lazy summer at home. She’s just received a promotion–she’ll be the editor working with Teak Helms, a novelist who specializes in sea adventures. She has his latest draft to review over the summer.

Swan Quarter, North Carolina, seems like the perfect place to relax and do some quiet work, with the calming sound of the Pamlico Sound and the picturesque landscape against blazing sunsets. However, Cathy’s plan hits two snags. Helms, who is her favorite writer, has written a terrible galley, and she and her father have unexpected guests. An out-of-towner, Jared Parsons, wants her father to fix his yacht, and Cathy is quick to judge the wealthy gentleman and his seemingly flawless “secretary,” Erica. Despite Cathy’s repeated rejections, Jared, handsome and charming, continues to make grand overtures to her during the time it takes her father to repair the boat. When it becomes clear that Jared appreciates her for her simplicity and wholesomeness, Cathy slowly begins to allow herself to fall for him. Before they can make their romance official, however, Jared’s true identity – and shocking connection to Swan Quarter – must be revealed.

Wildflowers is a reprint of two romance novels. Sea Gypsy (1980), set in North Carolina, is the first story; Golden Lasso (1980), set in Arizona, is the second.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Coast, Hyde, Michaels, Fern, Romance/Relationship

Kim Wright. Love in Mid Air. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010.

“Kelly is the only one who knew me when we were both young and pretty, when we were impulsive and the world seemed full of men, and we would find ourselves sometimes transported by sex, picked up and carried into situations that, in the muddle of memory, seem a bit like movie scenes. She is the only one who would understand that I am relieved to find a sliver of this girl still inside me.”  So muses Elyse, a 30-something married woman, after a chance encounter on a plane with an amorous investment banker.

That chance encounter makes Elyse rethink her comfortable, but unexciting life.  Should she push for more from her husband? Begin an affair with Gerry? Her circle of women friends–especially Kelly–are are privy to some of  Elyse’s thoughts, but in the end it is Elyse herself who must decide what her life will be.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Mecklenburg, Piedmont, Romance/Relationship, Wright, Kim

Rose Senehi. The Wind in the Woods. Vilas, NC: Canterbury House Publishing, 2010.

Jack “Tiger” Morrison is an honorable man.  He has balanced the competing demands of family and his strong environmental creed. Together, he and his wife, Susan, created a family and started a successful camp for children in North Carolina’s Green River Valley.  Susan has been dead for some time, the victim of a drunk driver, but his daughter Sammy helps him run the camp.

Tiger’s love of the camp and love of nature is as strong as ever, but lately he can’t help but notice that the property around the camp is being bought by developers. How can he hold on to the camp–should he even try? What does Sammy want?  Tiger has a feeling that this will come to a head soon, but he is unprepared for the other developments of this eventful summer when a serial killer is stalking women in the mountains.  Senehi mixes difficult and horrifying elements–the murders and the threats to Tiger’s way of life–with warm elements such as a young camper’s growth and a pair of romances.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2010, 2010-2019, Henderson, Mountains, Senehi, Rose, Suspense/Thriller

Nancy Gotter Gates. Death at Play: Murder at the Reenactment. Kernersville, NC: Alabaster Books, 2008.

Tommi Poag is a fifty-plus lady with an ordinary office job, trying to make a new life for herself after a divorce.  It all sounds very sedate, but Tommi somehow manages to get herself involved in controversies and crimes.

In Death at Play Tommi joins the board of her condo association just as it is being sued after the death of one condo owner’s show dog.  Tommi and her friend Constance are unwitting participants in an attempt to blackmail the dog’s owner.  When the dog’s owner is later murdered at a reenactment of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Tommi thinks it is time to look into the dead man’s past and his connections to others in the neighborhood. With her ex-husband, Bernard, serving as the main suspect’s lawyer, things get complicated, especially when Frank, Bernard’s cousin and Tommi’s new romantic interest, comes back to Greensboro.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Gates, Nancy Gotter, Guilford, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont