In the publishing world, fall is typically the season of heavy-hitting titles and big-name authors, and this year is no different. The list of books I’m eager to read this season is long, but here are six Southern titles that made their way to the top of the pile.
Credit: Riverhead Books
Credit: Riverhead Books
‘The Vaster Wilds’
Any time there’s a new book by Lauren Groff, it’s reason to rejoice. She’s been nominated three times for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle. Her latest novel may be the one that puts her over the top. As she proved with her 2021 novel “Matrix,” about a 12th century nun in England, Groff has an incomparable gift for making historical fiction feel visceral and relevant. She does it again with “The Vaster Wilds,” about a Colonial-era servant girl who escapes the settlement of Jamestown during the winter of 1610 and battles for survival in the wilderness. Despite enduring a myriad of physical agonies running from the constant threat of capture by beast and man, she still manages to find grace in the natural world. (Riverhead Books, Sept. 5)
Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Credit: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
‘American Gun’
Wall Street Journal reporters Zusha Elinson and Cameron McWhirter, a former reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, trace the history of the AR-15, the lightweight semi-automatic rifle invented in a garage in California that would go on to become standard U.S. military equipment in the Vietnam war and the weapon of choice by mass shooters. By focusing on the weapon’s popularity, the damage it has caused and the politics behind efforts to limit its use, Elinson and McWhirter explore America’s deeply ingrained gun culture. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sept. 26)
Credit: Doubleday
Credit: Doubleday
‘The Caretaker’
Ron Rash is one of the South’s most beloved storytellers, and his latest novel doesn’t disappoint. Set in 1950s Blowing Rock, North Carolina, “The Caretaker” is a heartfelt tale about a love triangle between Jacob, the son of a wealthy family who shuns him when he marries Naomi, an uneducated hotel maid, and his friend Blackburn, the disfigured caretaker of the town cemetery. When Jacob is sent to fight in the war in Korea, he asks Blackburn to look after Naomi. Before long, they develop feelings for one another after bonding over their shared outsider status. When Jacob gets injured and is sent back home, complications combust. (Doubleday, Sept. 26)
Credit: Scribner
Credit: Scribner
‘Let Us Descend’
One of the most important voices in contemporary literature, Jesmyn Ward is the first woman and first Black American to receive two National Book Awards for Fiction, winning for the novels “Salvage the Bones” and “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” For her latest book, Ward turns to historical fiction as she charts the life of young Annis, a slave forced to march from the rice fields of North Carolina to the slave markets of New Orleans where she’s sold to a sugar plantation in Louisiana. Providing comfort throughout her unspeakable ordeal are memories of her mother and stories of her grandmother, as well as a rich spiritual world that both vexes and guides her. (Scribner, Oct. 24)
Credit: Spiegel Grau
Credit: Spiegel Grau
‘The Comfort of Crows’
An op-ed contributor to the New York Times who writes about nature and the South, Nashville-based writer Margaret Renkl is the author of “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss” and “Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache on the American South.” Her latest book is a year-long meditation, chronicled week by week, on the passing of the seasons from the author’s backyard. The chapters are accompanied by color illustrations by her brother Billy Renkl. (Spiegel Grau, Oct. 24)
Credit: Harper
Credit: Harper
‘Among the Bros’
Anyone who’s attended college in the South knows the Greek system is a formidable institution, but journalist Max Marshall hadn’t realized how criminal it could be. In 2018 he went to the College of Charleston to investigate what he thought was a minor prescription drug ring. Instead he discovers suspicious deaths, an interstate drug trade and the exchange of millions of dollars. (Harper, Nov. 7)
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Contact her svanatten@ajc.com.
