Earlier this fall I spent a week at the Southern Independent Booksellers’ Alliance Fall Trade Show.  But I spent very little time wandering the exhibit floor. Instead, I have the most fun just talking to people.  To booksellers, to find out what they were reading, and to authors to find out what they had been writing.  I love meeting the writers, because behind every story is their story—what made them write the book, why it was important to them, what they hope readers will get from it.

Deep Thoughts: 

Brett Lott told a table of us over dinner that he didn’t think the exploration of spiritual dilemmas were only to be found in Christian fiction.  “The great novels,” he said, “all address spiritual questions.”  This was his driving motivation for putting together Eyes to See, Volume Two—a collection of stories from some very familiar writers who you might not immediately think of as “spiritual” writers.  From Chesterton to Updike, each included story “…have a greater resonance than the sum of their words, and the wolds they render reveal the Truth that man is lost wihtout his creator God, and that man is found through his encounter with Him.”  Philosophical and questioning without being preachy or dogmatic, this story collection will make you re-evaluate some of your favorite authors. At least, it made me do so.

I met Karen Spears Zacharias, now on the editorial desk at the Fayetteville Observer, when she started writing giving interviews for the Lady Banks’ Commonplace Book newsletter. She’s a Georgia native whose father died in the Vietnam War. But that’s another book. A Southern Baptist herself, Zacharias’ new book Where’s Your Jesus Now? is an affectionate but pithy exploration on how fear affects and corrodes faith.  The book explores questions that the author has been asking herself as she covered feature stories for news organizations like The New York Times, Newsweek, and NPR.  How is it that faith can be so easily shaken by fear? Where is our confidence in God, she asks. Where is our hope?

The Story behind the Story:

Sometimes, the past comes out of nowhere to confront us.  Nicole Seitz had such a moment happen when she was sitting at a restaurant with her father, a Vietnam veteran, and a vietnamese waiter triggered a mild but sudden flashback.  That incident became the foundation of her novel, A Hundred Years of Happiness.  It is a gentle but complex story about how the many disparate threads of seemingly unconnected lives are really entwined. A young mother attempting to help her volitle father, although she knows nothing about his experiences in the war.  When she accidentally runs across a Vietnamese woman searching for information about her grandmother, the past suddenly becomes very important, and very “present” in everyone’s lives.

Ron Rash is a guy I keep meeting in the oddest of places. We see each other in hotel elevators traveling to different floors, pass each other in convention center halls on our way to different events and appointments. “How’s things, Ron?” I sing out as we pass. “Doin’ great, Nicki, how ‘bout you?” he calls. And then we’re out of range until the next chance meeting at the next literary event.  Ron been at the top of my private list of “writers that should be way, way better known” – every since I read Saints at the River about four years ago.  Well, my wish has finally come true, because everyone has been talking about his new novel, Serena. As well they should. 

It’s a ferocious story about an unforgettable, indomintable woman intent on building a timber empire in Depression-era  Appalachia.  Serena comes to the mountains from Boston a new bride, but she is more than equal to the hazards of her new life.   The timber company prospers, even as the land is laid to waste.  But when Serena discovers she can never bear a child, her resilience turns into ruthlessness, and she sets off on a vendetta against anyone and everyone that stands in her way.