Cover to Cover

Macon native John Oliver Killens’s politically charged novels And Then We Heard the Thunder and The Cotillion; or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His works of fiction and nonfiction, the most famous of which is his novel Youngblood, have been translated into more than a dozen languages. An influential novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and teacher, he was the founding chair of the Harlem Writers Guild and mentored a generation of black writers at Fisk, Howard, Columbia, and elsewhere. Killens is recognized as the spiritual father of the Black Arts Movement. In this first major biography of Killens, Keith Gilyard examines the life and career of the man who was perhaps the premier African American writer-activist from the 1950s to the 1980s. Gilyard extends his focus to the broad boundaries of Killens’s times and literary achievement—from the Old Left to the Black Arts Movement and beyond. Figuring prominently in these pages are the many important African American artists and political figures connected to the author from the 1930s to the 1980s—W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Alphaeus Hunton, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte, and Maya Angelou, among others.

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On assignment in China with her husband and family in 2003, Kay Bratt took up the cause of China’s forgotten orphans. She volunteered in a Chinese orphanage for four years. Silent Tears – A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage is a first hand account of her time there. In her memoir, Kay describes the life of the orphans she encounters and the emotional struggle she faced while trying to advocate for them.

Now back in America, Kay Bratt continues her work with China’s orphans, raising awareness wherever she goes. She was honored with the Chinese 2006 Pride of the City award for her humanitarian work. She is the founder of the Mifan Mommy Club – an online organization that supplies rice to children in Chinese orphanages, and she is an active volunteer with CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates.)

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George "Machine Gun" Kelly is a name from the heyday of the American gangster era as familiar as "Baby Face" Nelson, Bonnie & Clyde, "Ma" Barker and many other colorful outlaws, but the details of his life and crimes are far less well-known.

Mississippi author Ace Atkins, who has carved out a distinctive niche for himself with a number of historical crime novels, decided it was time to change that fact. Thus, Kelly's exploits are the subject of Atkins latest: Infamous.

As Atkins explains in his Cover to Cover interview, the story of "Machine Gun" Kelly can't be told without focusing equally on his wife, Katherine. Kelly, unique among the famous gangters, was a native of the South and raised in relative priviledge. He was a good looking, somewhat lazy character, content being a minor player in various criminal endeavors until the beautiful, ambitious Katherine came into his life.

Together they pulled off the kidnapping of one of the wealthiest oilmen in the country. The crime gave Katherine the kind of notoriety she sought but ultimately led to the couple's capture, all of which Atkins describes in Infamous with flourish and detail.

As unlikely a figure for a famed outlaw as Kelly was, Atkins has taken an equally distinctive path into the world of popular fiction. He starred on Auburn University's undefeated football team of 1993 before beginning a career as an award-winning newspaper reporter in Florida. Eventually, his fascination with crime led to the popular series of mystery novels featuring former football star/blues historian Nick Travers. is Atkins' fourth historically based crime novel. Altogether his work has led no less an expert than bestselling novelist Michael Connelly to call Atkins “one of the best crime writers at work today."

Infamous

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It’s quite possible we’ve never had a guest on Cover to Cover quite as comfortable in the talk studio as this week’s guest, longtime Atlanta Braves broadcaster Pete Van Wieren. In 2008, Pete retired from a distinguished career of 33 years with Atlanta’s Major League Baseball club. His new memoir, Of Mikes and Men, is chock full of anecdotes about the club and insights into the mind of the team’s scholarly voice.

Obviously, the natural appeal here is to Braves’ fans, of which there should be no shortage. The team’s radio network is reportedly the largest radio network of any sports franchise in the United States, and Van Wieren and his longtime broadcast partner, Skip Carey, hold a special place in the hearts of many of those fans.

Van Wieren talks about Caray’s declining health and how it affected his work in his final broadcasts before he passed away suddenly in 2008. He also talks about his early days knocking around with a rock band at Cornell University, the lean years broadcasting minor league games, the elation when he got the call to Atlanta, the sudden death of baseball’s first African-American general manager, hustling out of downtown Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots, Ted Turner’s one-game stint in the dugout as manager, and much more.

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A title that was originally intended as a joke sold the book before it was even written. Karen Spears Zacharias recently published this book - her fourth - titled: Will Jesus Buy Me a Double Wide. She is a journalist and author of 3 other non-fiction books and has won dozens of writing awards.

Karen traveled the country collecting stories of ordinary and not so ordinary folk. Each chapter anonymously titled: The Preacher, The Evangelist, The Sister, The Marine. Karen investigates what role God and money play in people's lives. The book is filled with humor and also asks some incredibly tough questions like: What does it mean to be blessed by God? And Karen isn't afraid to give the answers.

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In Patricia Sprinkle’s latest novel, Hold Up the Sky, she takes a temporary hiatus from crime fiction to tell the story of four women, devastated but ultimately strengthened and united by the hardships that beset them.

Mamie is facing an overwhelming secret. Margaret has lost her home. Billie can no longer care for her disabled daughter alone. And Maria is living with an untenable choice. When these four women come together to live on a drought-stricken Georgia farm, they must open their hearts, and share their burdens, before they can find the bounty that lies hidden in tough times, and once again see the glorious pattern of meaning in their lives.

Lisa Wingate, author of The Summer Kitchen calls this "A heartfelt story of the women who catch us when we fall-the sisters and friends who hold up the sky and show us who we were meant to be," and Patti Callahan Henry, national bestselling author of Driftwood Summer says, "Patricia Sprinkle takes us deep into the thoughts and feelings of four women who realize the only way to true strength is to share their faith, their hearts and each other's lives.”

Man Martin talks with Patricia Sprinkle about the theme of resilience, the craft of writing, and what it means to be a southern writer in the New South.

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After a successful career writing for television ("Dawson's Creek", et al) in Hollywood, Atlanta native Jeffrey Stepakoff is back home and embarking on a second career as a novelist. His previous work prepared him well, for his debut, Fireworks Over Toccoa, has all the earmarks of a popular novel but also seems destined to be a big or small screen drama.

The novel is the story of a young bride, Lily, whose husband leaves almost immediately after they're wed, to fight in World War II. On the eve of his return, she meets an alluring young man, a manufacturer of of fireworks (indeed), and thus Lily is forced to choose between her prior commitment and unmistakable passions of the heart. Setting his novel in the North Georgia town of Toccoa, which Stepakoff knows well, the one-time screen writer proves to be a master not just of creating characters and a dramatic story but also at evoking a strong sense of place. 1940s Toccoa comes alive as fully as any character in the book, and the present-day town, not surprisingly, is fully embracing the novel, anticipating a response from readers to Toccoa like Savannah experienced with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

In addition to his multi-faceted writing talents, Stepakoff is a professor at Kennesaw State University, and our interview reveals him to be fully immersed in and an enthusiastic instructor on the craft of story telling. Though he already has two decades of professional recognition and accomplishment under his belt, with the new direction his writing career is taking, Jeffrey Stepakoff seems primed, with Fireworks Over Toccoa, to emerge as a major author of popular Southern fiction.

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The relationship between biography and fiction, the pros and cons of writing programs, and the writing life in general are just a few of the topics touched on as Man Martin interviews Susan Rebecca White about her newest book, A Soft Place to Land.

This is the story about two sisters torn apart after their parents' death in an airplane crash. Resentment, anger and jealousy divide them, but in time even these cannot erase the love they feel for each other. In a world where nothing is certain and catastrophe can strike any time, we all need "a soft place to land."

Anne Rivers Siddons, author of Off White, says White "has perfect pitch and a wicked pen," and Todd Johnson, author of The Sweet By and By calls White a "true original" and predicts that A Soft Place to Land is "sure to win your heart."

White's first novel, Bound South, won a devoted readership and widespread praise. White lives, writes and teaches in Atlanta where she shares a home with her husband Alan Deutschman, dog Raney and cats Moses and Zippy.

White officially launches her second book at a book signing at the Carter Center, Wednesday, April 14 at 7 p.m.

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2009 marked the 145th anniversary of the fall of Atlanta during the Civil War, so Mark Wortman's book published last year was a timely look at this fascinating chapter (some would say dark chapter) in Georgia's history. Wortman has a journalist's flair for keen insight and detail, and above all he tells a good story.

Like most of my interviews, 30 minutes proved all too short to ask the author everything I was interested in. Some of the ones I posed to Marc Wortman: How does a guy with a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton get interested in Atlanta and the Civil War?

One of the things in his book that most intrigued me was the fact that we now take it for granted that Atlanta is an important city, that it's the Gateway to the New South, the home of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, the Atlanta Braves, Home Depot, CNN, Coca-Cola, etc., but the Atlanta he describes wasn't all that big or seemingly all that important as a city. Wortman writes, "Few people in the North or among Union military officials had heard of Atlanta before the outbreak of the rebellion." How then did two great armies find themselves in and around Atlanta in the summer of 1864? And why is Atlanta's fall directly credited with paving the way for Lincoln's re-election the following November?

A book like this is full of fascinating characters, among them of course William Tecumseh Sherman. He obviously plays a very prominent role in this book, and in fact Wortman gives him the very last word. Even today, his name evokes fierce passions and emotions in Georgia. And yet, when he returned to Atlanta in 1879, Wortman writes that "few people in Atlanta remained ill disposed toward Sherman." How is that possible? I'm quite certain that wouldn't be the case now, 145 years later. Last year the Georgia Historical Society had a public program about Sherman, and we received numerous letters and emails from people across Georgia (and the rest of the country) vehemently denouncing him. How was it possible that "few" of the Atlantans who actually lived through Sherman's siege were so forgiving in 1879?

Finally, with the Civil War's 150th anniversary fast approaching, there will be commemorative events across the country. One of the questions I like to pose to writers of Civil War history: What do the events in your book still have to teach us in the 21st century?

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