Literature of the American South: Mark Childress

"The world turns upside down and everything goes a little crazy in Mark Childress's fabulous tale of a hot, restless summer in Alabama and an unforgettable woman who looks for salvation in Hollywood." ""A writer of almost uncanny stylistic ability and clear vision," says Stephen King of Mark Childress. "His eye for detail is extraordinary. It makes you want to holler Oh Yeah!"" "Over the course of three very fine novels, Mark Childress has had readers across America hollering Oh Yeah! at his exuberant storytelling, his sixth sense for characterization, and his ability to stir powerful memories. Now, with Crazy in Alabama, Childress delivers the touching and vastly entertaining tale of Peejoe, an orphan boy who comes of age during a racially restless summer in the Deep South, and Lucille, his zany aunt who flees from a soul-numbing marriage - a union she can't entirely escape in the end. For both Lucille and Peejoe, the summer of '65 will live on as the time when everybody went crazy in Alabama." "By turns puckishly comic and disturbingly poignant, Crazy in Alabama gets everything right, and then some. This is the novel that Childress fans have been waiting for."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In his fifth novel, the much praised author of Crazy in Alabama gives us the wild, comic, and ultimately moving odyssey of a 1970s folk-rock star, Ben "Superman" Willis. Superman has been riding a wave of success in the years since the Beatles broke up and rock and roll wore itself out. But stardom is not what he thought it would be: the only time he's truly happy is when he's up in his plane, flying alone to the next concert, his son Ben Junior stashed at home in L.A., and his wife Alexa--a former Miss Southwest Louisiana--following along in a bus down below. One night, after a show in El Paso, he flies head-on into the adventure of his life.

When Daniel Musgroves family moves to a small Mississippi town at the beginning of his junior year, he faces all the pain and thrills of adolescence, with extra helpings of hormones and humiliation. But then he meets Tim, a fellow outsider, and the two become fast friends. You only need one best friend, Daniel reasons, to make it through high school alive. In the spirit of Richard Russo and Tom Perrotta, Mark Childress is one of our sharpest and most keen-eyed chroniclers of small-town life. ONE MISSISSIPPI is his most ambitious and accomplished novel yet.

Georgia Bottoms is known in her small community of Six Points, Alabama, as a beautiful, well-to-do, and devoutly Baptist Southern belle. Nobody realizes that the family fortune has long since disappeared, and a determinedly single woman like Georgia needs an alternative, and discreet, means of income. In Georgia's case it is six well-heeled lovers-one for each day of the week, with Mondays off-none of whom knows about the others. But when the married preacher who has been coming to call (Saturdays) decides to confess their affair in front of the whole congregation, Georgia must take drastic measures to stop him. In GEORGIA BOTTOMS, Mark Childress proves once again his unmistakable skill for combining the hilarious and the absurd to reveal the inner workings of the rebellious human heart.