“To Kill A Mockingbird”, Harper Lee

I read this book when I was a freshman in high school. It flowed with truth and beauty. It described a small town in the South… a place I’d never been. It also had the precious dynamics of an older brother and his sassy, but also sensitive little sister. A…

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

by Annie Dillard “Then one day, walking along Tinker Creek, thinking of nothing at all, I saw it —- the tree with the lights in it. It was the same backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost, only charged and transfigured, etc cell buzzing with flame … It was less…

Look Homeward Angel

by Thomas Wolfe I was saved from what fate I shall never know when a woman came to live with us when I was ten years old. She was my maternal grandmother. “Nana” was what we knew her name to be. It was ordained by others in the family long…

Ninety Two in the Shade

by Thomas Mc Guane I returned to live in Key West in the very year another resident of Key West released this book. I originally arrived to the last island out of America in ’71 and fell under it’s spell. It was like falling in love with a woman. But…

Victuals: An Appalachian Journey

Excerpted from “Victuals. Say it the way my people have for centuries: vidls. Maybe you’ve seen it spelled “vittles” in a cartoon balloon coming from the mouth of Mammy Yokum. Or heard it as the punch line delivered before Granny Clampett clogs off to “roast up a mess of possum.”…

 
© 2024 Norman Van Aken. All rights Reserved.