Literature

Ted Dunagan continues the saga of two adventuresome boys, Ted and Poudlum, in Secret of the Satilfa, the sequel to Dunagan’s debut novel A Yellow Watermelon. In the fall of 1948, young Ted and Poudlum have their post-Thanksgiving fishing trip to the Cypress Hole on the Satilfa Creek interrupted by unwelcome visitors and fugitive bank robbers. They managed to escape and return to the Satilfa to search for money rumored to have been hidden by the criminals along with seemingly half the locals of...

This slender book, the last of twenty-nine written by Kathryn Tucker Windham over her long and productive life, will be an exquisitely bittersweet read for many fans of the late storyteller and author from Selma, Alabama. Windham died shortly before the publication of the volume, but only over the last eighteen months of her life did she seem constrained by her advancing years. In She, which Windham was putting the finishing touches on when she died at age 93 in June 2011, the author describes...

How many friends do you have? Two, five, ten? Now think about your best friend. The friend who makes you smile the widest. What would you do if that friend suddenly moved far away and you thought you’d never see them again? That’s the problem that faced the friends in our story, Walter and Wimbly. They reacted just like you might. But there is a slight difference. Walter and Wimbly are cats.

Twenty-five-year- old Lizzy thinks if she keeps her eyes closed all the way, then maybe what she is experiencing will not be real. Her mother, who has always been her rock, is about to die from cancer. As her mother takes her last breath, Lizzy, who has never truly been on her own steps into the unknown and begins a new life. After her mother’s death Lizzy’s inner strength is tested after family secrets come out revealing the imperfections of those she loves and admires. Now it’s time for...

Many documentaries, articles, museum exhibits, books, and movies have now treated subject of the Tuskegee Airmen, the only black American military pilots in World War II. Most of these works have focused on their training and their subsequent accomplishments during combat. This publication goes further, using captioned photographs to trace the Airmen through the various stages of training, deployment, and combat in North Africa, Italy, and over occupied Europe. For the first times are...

If you’ve read Mary Ward Brown’s fiction you know these deceptively bold contrasts conceal layers of subtlety. In her stories, stereotype, negative and positive, reveal their other sides, lighter, and darker, and hasty, judgmental attitudes toward people and places do not last. Change and continuity, past and present, black race and white, massive abstractions and concrete particulars, all are reflected in a real, whole word, by characters from a complete social spectrum. Like most of the...

In Ted Dunagan’s third young adult novel, boyhood friends Ted and Poudlum, a white and a black boy who live in the rural segregated South of the 1940s, are in for more adventure. On A fishing trip, they camp out in the vicinity of a Ku Klux Klan meeting and they learn the identity of key Klansmen. They used their wits to escape down the river but only to swim into the arms of more trouble, including Ted and Poudlum would even be kidnapped. Their escapades test their resourcefulness and...

"Sometimes you need to dream a little bigger..."Eleven year old Brittany knows there has to be a better world out there. Lately, though, it sure doesn't feel like it. She and her best friend, Marisol, stick together at school, but at home Brittany's granny is sick, her cat is missing, there's never any money, and there's Jack to worry about. Brittany has a hard time picturing her future as anything but a plain white sky. But if her life is ever going to change, she needs a plan. And once she...

“I’ve grown up in Alabama, and there is still so much that I have yet to see, so that would be a really helpful thing to have on hand — to be able to adventure more and see new things.” - The Crimson White “By criss-crossing Alabama’s majestic mountains, beautiful beaches, and everything in between, Wilson has crafted the most interesting itinerary for both visitors and Alabamans alike.” - Melanie Schnieders, Gulf Coast News Today “How many Alabama attractions have you visited in your...

Duck hunting, deer hunting, turkey hunting, or fishing, if any of these endeavors are going on there probably a Bubba involved. South Alabama has always been a haven for Bubba types. They all have one thing in common: given the opportunity they will do some dumb stuff while pursuing their sport. Included in these pages are stories about a few of these Bubbas, both the Causeway variety like the ones on Polecat Bay, and their hillbilly counterparts from upstate a ways. The stories are all true...

-Train is the story of one of the black Americans who, during World War II, graduated from Tuskegee (AL) Flying School and served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps’ 99th Pursuit Squadron. Charles W. Dryden presents a fast-paced, balanced, and personal account of what it was like to prepare for a career traditionally closed to African Americans, how he coped with the frustrations and dangers of combat, and how he, along with many fellow black pilots, navigators, bombardiers, and crewmen, emerged...

No state in America has a higher percentage of restaurants seving barbecue than Alabama, according to a recent survey. More than 300 Alabama restaurants serve the savory smoked meat. That's enough to make a pig-pilgramage every weekend for a half decade without visiting the same one twice!These are the dining spots that you can smell before you see them: sweet hardwood smoke wafting across the landscape, drawing diners off the highway at places they never intended to stop.The best ones are...