Amelia Island Book Festival features Sonny Brewer

Festival Focus
A series of reviews of books to be featured at the Amelia Island Book Festival – 2010. Reviewers represent a broad spectrum of community readers and writers.

Author Sonny Brewer will be a featured author at the Festival, Feb. 12-13, 2010.

The Poet of Tolstoy Park by Sonny Brewer
Reviewed by Attavia Facciolo

One would not expect to find a “Tolstoy Park” in the sleepy, southern town of Fairhope, Alabama; but it exists there, today, as a monument to its builder, Henry Stuart. Stuart, the inspirational hero of Sonny Brewer’s novel, The Poet of Tolstoy Park, lived, between 1925 and 1944, in the round house he build on a bluff overlooking Mobile Bay.

A few years ago, Brewer, a writer, editor, founder of the Fairhope Center for Writing Arts, and founder of Over the Transom Bookstore, became interested in Henry Stuart and his unusual house. His research into the Fairhope “character” led him to move, part-time, into the tiny house where he wrote Stuart’s story.

Henry Stuart was a 67-year-old retired professor and widower living in Canyon County, Idaho when he was told, by his doctor, that he probably would die within a couple of years, but that moving to a more temperate climate might extend his life. Henry researched locations and decided on Fairhope, AL versus Arizona. He gave away most of his possessions and set off for Fairhope against protests from his grown sons and his friends. Brewer discovered from Henry’s journals that, among the items he packed into the two valises he carried with him were “ a Russian language copy of Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom and another thin volume of Tolstoy’s work, What Men Live By and What Shall it Profit a Man...... He also took a book of sonnets by Rainer Maria Rilke, 2 pairs of pants, 4 shirts, a set of suspenders, 4 handkerchiefs and 2 dark woolen vests, a large sweater knitted for him by his wife Molly, a small rug he had knitted for her, and a journal.” By the time Henry reached his destination, he had given away his boots, his hat and his coat. He was ready to begin the rest of his life.

Stuart lived in the round house, of his own design and construction, for nearly another 20 years. He named the house and surrounding property Tolstoy Park. Although he was called by some a “hermit,” “some kiney crazy old poet,” and a “sideshow,” according to the guest books he kept, he was visited by over 1,100 people, including multiple visits by Clarence Darrow.

Poet is most definitely an engaging and inspiring read. Sonny Brewer’s prose is like Henry Stuart’s life in Tolstoy Park – elegant in its simplicity.
Best selling author, Pat Conroy calls “The Poet of Tolstoy Park “...one of those unique and wonderful books that sings a hymn of praise to the philosophical and spiritual part of daily life.”

Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Bragg says: “Sonny Brewer writes the way people think and talk, if, of course, those people are poets. The language in the novel is lovely where it needs to be and gristle-tough where it is called for...I loved this book because I love to read, and because I love to write, and I envy the skill in this as much as I loved the story that the writer’s skill embraces.”

Other books by Sonny Brewer include A Sound like Thunder, Cormac–The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing, and Brewer’s latest, The Widow and the Tree.

The reviewer, Attavia Facciolo has been a resident of Nassau County since 2002, when she and husband, Jim, came here from Jacksonville. Attavia worked in advertising as a media specialist for over 20 years. She was the Volunteer Coordinator for The Salvation Army-Northeast Florida from 1996 to 1999. From 2002 to 2008, she worked as a legal assistant at Hayden & Facciolo, P.A. She has been a director on the board of the Amelia Island Book Festival since 2007. As an advocate for education and literacy, Attavia volunteers as a tutor for Communities-in-Schools. She enjoys the many cultural and historical aspects of this community, and tries to participate whenever possible.

For information about the festival go to: http://www.ameliaisandbookfestival.com/
or contact Executive Director - Dickie Anderson at www. dickie.anderson@gmail.com

Amelia Island Book Festival - Jeff Shaara

Amelia Island Book Festival - Author Focus
February 11-14 – 2010

Festival Focus
A series of reviews of books to be featured at the Amelia Island Book Festival – 2010. Reviewers represent a broad spectrum of community readers and writers. Author Jeff Shaara will be a featured author at the Festival, Feb. 11-14, 2010.

The Steel Wave by Jeff Shaara
Reviewed by Cal Atwood

Jeff Shaara is a name to be reckoned with. Readers probably came across him early on when his first book, Gods and Generals, arrived on the scene as a major motion picture—released by Warner Brothers in 1995.

Shaara comes by his literary legacy honestly. His father, Michael Shaara, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his classic novel The Killer Angels, which became the motion picture Gettysburg in 1993. Readers may have seen Shaara’s fine baseball story, starring Kevin Costner, For Love of The Game.

So, it seems like we are always looking for another good book to read. If you like action locked into a history background, you might just want to light up your reading lamp and dive into a book by Jeff Shaara. He has written some mighty sturdy books about the Revolutionary War, the Mexican War, Civil War and World Wars I and II. I have read most of his works and found them always to be a sterling read.

The Steel Wave, of Shaara’s three books on World War II, begins with a commando raid in January 1944 to get sand and soil samples from the Normandy beaches. Later, we zoom into preparations for the invasion, the invasion in June, and continue on in battle form to the death of Rommel in September, 1944. Freighted with action, this novel centers around the parachute drops of the Airborne Divisions, the 81st and the 101st, behind enemy lines at Normandy. The reader is mesmerized by the terrible terrain of the landing zones and the extreme hardships of the drops. Dozens of vicious and deadly skirmishes take place against the formidable German troops within a few miles and in St. Mere Eglise. If anyone thinks they might want to wear the wings and boots of a parachutist, it would be a good idea to read this book first---the glamour disappears in a flash.

The terrain behind the lines is extremely dangerous as is Shaara’s voyage into the minds of some of the troopers on the ground: Adams, Thorne, Scofield, and Unger. Even more dangerously, we also visit the minds of combat leaders as they make pivotal decisions. For example: Gavin, Ridgway, Rommel, Patton, Eisenhower. Shaara is challenged to get in the minds of those in combat, difficult if not impossible to do.

Shaara obviously did the voluminous research and possesses the skill and power to present his characters in eminently believable form.

The reviewer, Cal Atwood, lives on Amelia Island with his wife Carol Ann. As a marine serving in WW II, he landed on Iwo Jima. He is active in the Marine Corp League. He was president of both the North Carolina Poetry Society and the Georgia State Poetry Society and currently serves on the board of the Amelia Island Museum of History. Atwood enjoyed a distinguished career as an educator and influenced many with his own life experience.

For more information about the Amelia Island Book Festival visit: http://www.ameliaislandbookfestival.com/

Festival Focus: Jack Riggs Featured Author at Amelia Island Book Festival

A series of reviews of books to be featured at the Amelia Island Book Festival – 2010. Reviewers represent a broad spectrum of community readers and writers. Author Jack Riggs will be a featured author at the Festival, Feb. 11-14, 2010.

WHEN THE FINCH RISES By Jack Riggs
Reviewed by Anne Entriken

Jack Riggs’ debut novel of two struggling young boys coming of age in a small mill town in North Carolina is cleverly woven like the finest of threads among world events in the pivotal year of 1968. That year was one that changed our culture forever. Since Riggs grew up during that time of political assassinations, civil rights, and the Viet Nam war, it was the perfect backdrop for his first effort.

It is the tale of twelve-year-old Raybert Williams and his best friend Palmer Conroy who cling to each other in the closest of friendships, as blood brothers, while living in their parents’ real world existence on the edge of poverty, mental illness and complete dysfunction.

The boys dream and plan a permanent escape to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in a 1965 Pontiac Catalina convertible belonging to Palmer’s deceased father, and all the while, Palmer’s short legs barely even reach the pedals. Their heroes are GI Joe, The Lone Ranger, and especially Evel Knievel when they witness the famous jump over 20 buses that he successfully made and some of us remember well.

Through real, raw emotion and growing momentum, Riggs spins a tale filled with young sensibilities, redemption, grace, salvation, and the absolute assuredness that anything is possible.

Riggs, who teaches at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta and who was named Georgia Author of the Year – Fiction 2009 for his second novel, Fireman’s Wife, developed an interest in writing detailed character development and began by writing short stories for literary publications. It became apparent those stories could be part of a much larger work. Parts of those original stories are brilliantly used to enrich the novel itself. In the case of When The Finch Rises, Riggs brought the boys to life and allowed them to live their story as only he could tell it.

“Refreshingly different…Clear-eyed and fair…Riggs pulls everything together with honesty and grace, the fate of each character seeming both unexpected and inevitable.”
---The Charlotte Observer

“Riggs conjures up the mysteries of a mill town summer, vividly depicting the lights and shadows of ordinary events and horrors…deeply satisfying portrait of a troubled family.”
---The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Readers will be taken with narrator Raybert’s vivid and poignant recollection of and reflection on his childhood, and appreciative of the choices Riggs made in bringing it to life.”
---Richmond Times Dispatch

The reviewer, Anne Entriken, is active in island book clubs, Micah's Place Auxiliary and is an avid reader as well as writer. A long-time Amelia Island resident, Entriken grew up Virginia where she attended high school and college. She worked for the Smithsonian Institution, US Office of Education and Department of Agriculture and as a corporate wife has lived all over the country. She and her husband Sam have two children and three grandchildren.

For more inforamtion about the Amelia Island Book Festival: www.ameliaislandbookfestival.com
or contact Executive Director - Dickie Anderson at
www. dickie.anderson@gmail.com