Southern Literature Society Book Club for Adults
The Robertson County History Museum presents
Southern Literature Society Book Club for Adults!
STARTING MARCH 6TH AT 6PM
We will meet once a month on the first Monday of the month at 6pm-8pm at the Robertson County History Museum. Participants are responsible for buying their own book.
Cost is $10.00 a month.
MARCH
American Lion
By: Jon Meacham
Andrew Jackson, his intimate circle of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency. Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy.
APRIL
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
By: Denise Kiernan
The Tennessee town of Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942. One of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949, and yet at the height of World War II it was using more electricity than New York City and was home to more than 75,000 people, many of them young women recruited from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery, but they were buoyed by a sense of shared purpose, close friendships—and a surplus of handsome scientists and Army men!
But against this vibrant wartime backdrop, a darker story was unfolding. The penalty for talking about their work—even the most innocuous details—was job loss and eviction. One woman was recruited to spy on her coworkers. They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.
MAY
Dorie : Woman of the Mountains
By: Florence Cope Bush
Through Dorie's eyes, we see how the mountain farmers were forced to abandon their beloved rural life-style and customs and assimilate into cities like Knoxville, Tennessee. Her experiences were shared by hundreds of Appalachians during the early twentieth century. However, Dorie's perseverance, strength of character, and deep love of the Smokies make this a unique and moving narrative.
JUNE
The Widow of the South
By: Robert Hicks
Tennessee, 1864. On a late autumn day, near a little town called Franklin, 10,000 men will soon lie dead or dying in a battle that will change many lives for ever. None will be more changed than Carrie McGavock, who finds her home taken over by the Confederate army and turned into a field hospital. Taking charge, she finds the courage to face up to the horrors around her and, in doing so, finds a cause.
JULY
Before & After: The Incredible Real Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society
By: Judy Christie
The incredible, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal--some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate's bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach
From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents--hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died.
The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's lucrative career in child trafficking.
AUGUST
Long Man
By: Amy Greene
From the critically acclaimed author of Bloodroot, a gripping, wondrously evocative novel drawn from real-life historical events: the story of three days in the summer of 1936, as a government-built dam is about to flood an Appalachian town-and a little girl goes missing.
SEPTEMBER
On Bended Knees: The Night Rider Story
By: Bill Cunningham
A non-fictional tale of the Kentucky and Tennessee tobacco wars and farmers' revolt against the impoverishing tobacco prices of the "Duke Trust." Story of James B. Duke's tobacco empire and Dr. David Amoss from Kentucky, who led the secret organiztion known as the "Night Riders."
OCTOBER
Forgotten Tales of Tennessee
By: Kelly Kazek
Tennessee has never been a stranger to strangeness. Stories of the weird, wild and wonderful abound in the Volunteer State. Join author and seasoned journalist Kelly Kazek as she tracks down the extraordinary stories that other history books overlook. Each section covers a different outlandish theme of Tennessee history--colorful characters, strange sites, intriguing incidents, tombstone tales, odd occurrences and curious creatures.
NOVEMBER
Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of Cherokees in the Twentieth Century
By: John R. Finger
Much has been written about the forced removal of thousands of Cherokee Indians to present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s. Many of them died on the Trail of Tears. But until recently historians have largely ignored the tribal remnant that avoided removal and remained in North Carolina. John R. Finger shifts attention to the Eastern Band of Cherokees, descended from that remnant and now numbering almost ten thousand, most of whom live on a reservation adjacent to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cherokee Americans is, ironically, the first comprehensive account of the twentieth-century experience of a band that is known to and photographed by millions of tourists. This book is a sequel to The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 1819–1900 (1984) by John R. Finger, who is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee.
