The Locale: Food Glorious Food, hosted by Yeline
Book’s Website
Author’s Website
The Book:
Jolie Hoyt is a good southern girl living in Hendrix, a small Florida Panhandle town. The daughter of a Pentecostal preacher who sells insurance on the side, and the best friend of a lively beauty who moves to the big city to pursue a career in interior design, Jolie is all too aware of her family’s closet full of secrets and long-held distrust of outsiders. Nevertheless, she throws caution to the wind when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student from Miami, who is in town to study the ethnic makeup of the region. Jolie and Sam fall recklessly in love and dream of beginning a life together, far away from Jolie’s buried past. But their affair ends abruptly when Sam is discovered to have pried too deeply into Hendrix’s dark racial history and he becomes the latest victim in a long tradition of small-town violence. Twelve years later, when a black businessman from Memphis returns to Hendrix to do right by his father’s memory, Jolie and Sam are brought together again. They are forced to revisit the unresolved issues of their young love and finally shed light on the ugly history of Jolie’s hometown. A complex and compulsively readable Southern saga, continuing in the tradition established by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and brought into the new millennium by writers like Karen Russell and Kathryn Stockett, American Ghost was inspired by Janis Owens’s extensive research on a real lynching that occurred in 1934 in Marianna, Florida.
The Fun:
Sarah writes, "Thanks for a wonderful evening, ladies. My food was amazing! The appetizers and cocktail were a lovely addition- thanks Yeline! Holly, I hope you’re feeling better today and the crud leaves you quickly. I type in between sneezes and coughs… Most of us enjoyed the book well enough but found many faults in the way the plot was laid out and the book came together. Susan, your article really was a nice addition to our discussion. If you haven’t read the article about the actual lynching, I strongly suggest it. "
Book’s Website
Author’s Website
The Book:
Jolie Hoyt is a good southern girl living in Hendrix, a small Florida Panhandle town. The daughter of a Pentecostal preacher who sells insurance on the side, and the best friend of a lively beauty who moves to the big city to pursue a career in interior design, Jolie is all too aware of her family’s closet full of secrets and long-held distrust of outsiders. Nevertheless, she throws caution to the wind when she meets Sam Lense, a Jewish anthropology student from Miami, who is in town to study the ethnic makeup of the region. Jolie and Sam fall recklessly in love and dream of beginning a life together, far away from Jolie’s buried past. But their affair ends abruptly when Sam is discovered to have pried too deeply into Hendrix’s dark racial history and he becomes the latest victim in a long tradition of small-town violence. Twelve years later, when a black businessman from Memphis returns to Hendrix to do right by his father’s memory, Jolie and Sam are brought together again. They are forced to revisit the unresolved issues of their young love and finally shed light on the ugly history of Jolie’s hometown. A complex and compulsively readable Southern saga, continuing in the tradition established by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and brought into the new millennium by writers like Karen Russell and Kathryn Stockett, American Ghost was inspired by Janis Owens’s extensive research on a real lynching that occurred in 1934 in Marianna, Florida.
The Fun:
Sarah writes, "Thanks for a wonderful evening, ladies. My food was amazing! The appetizers and cocktail were a lovely addition- thanks Yeline! Holly, I hope you’re feeling better today and the crud leaves you quickly. I type in between sneezes and coughs… Most of us enjoyed the book well enough but found many faults in the way the plot was laid out and the book came together. Susan, your article really was a nice addition to our discussion. If you haven’t read the article about the actual lynching, I strongly suggest it. "
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2011/reports/claude-neal-lynching/
The Vote:
Carmen presented:
Up Next:
The Long Walk, Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, on January 13th @ Holly's.
Next to Present: Susan
Then:
The Vote:
Carmen presented:
- Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
- A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire (Book 1) by George R. R. Martin
Up Next:
The Long Walk, Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, on January 13th @ Holly's.
Next to Present: Susan
Then:
- Brenda
- Lori
- Sarah
- Susan H.
- Diana
- Angela
- Tassy
- Yeline
- Holly
- Carmen
- Susan
