Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson (Warner Books, $22.95)
Peopled by believable characters, this tiny town, population 90, resonates as a familiar Southern blip on the map. Two feuding families, the lawless Crabtrees and the influential Fretts, dominate.
Some 30 years ago, Hazel Crabtree, then 15, stumbles into the home of arch family enemy Bernese, a former nurse. Hazel is about to give birth to the child she's kept secret from her no-account family. Bernese's sisters, Genny and her twin, Stacia, arrive on the scene and assist.
Stacia, a deaf sculptor of renowned dolls who is going blind, immediately realizes her new purpose in life is to become the child's mother. Hazel readily agrees, and Bernese makes furtive legal arrangements. Later, Ona Crabtree, the baby's grandmother, finds out. Her blood boils at having her kith and kin raised by Fretts, but it's too late for the child, named Nonny, to warm up to the unsavory side of her family. As an adult, Nonny escapes the complicated family bonds by becoming a hearing interpreter in Athens. But threats and a violent episode pull Nonny back home, where once again she will be thrust between the feuding Fretts and Crabtrees. --Nancy Dorman-Hickson
About the Author: Joshilyn Jackson
Joshilyn Jackson was born in the Deep South and raised by fundamentalists who taught her to be virtuous and upright. It didn't take; she dropped out of college to pursue a career as an actor. She worked in regional repertoire and traveled the southern third of the country with a dinner theatre troupe, but after a few years she realized that she preferred writing plays to acting in them.
She returned to school and graduated with honors from Georgia State University with a degree in English. While living in Atlanta, she worked as both a writer and actor with The Players, a children's theatre group. She moved to Chicago and managed to recover from "a near-terminal case of culture shock" just in time to earn her MA in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jackson taught English at UIC, trying to explain the function of the gerund and why Moby Dick is a great book to crowds of hung-over 18 year olds. In her first year of teaching, she won the Student's Choice Award for Best English Instructor.
After graduate school she ran for warmer climes, returning to her hometown and marrying the boy next door. She currently lives just outside of Atlanta with her husband, their two children, and a 23-pound, one-eyed Maine Coon cat named Franz Schubert.
Her children's play, Another Snow White, was produced by The Players in Atlanta. Her play Screwing Lazarus was produced by Pawme Productions at The Basement Theatre in Chicago, and played for sold out crowds for the entire run. She worked as a staff writer and then an editor for the Postfeminist Playground, a website that racked up a half-million hits by over a hundred thousand unique users each month.
She has worked as a writing consultant, a ghostwriter, and sells humorous essays as Web content to companies like American Greetings and SocialNet. Her short fiction has been published in literary magazines including TriQuarterly and Calyx, and her short story "SixLips" appeared in ChickLit II, an anthology of up and coming female writers. Her debut novel, gods in Alabama, was a #1 Booksense pick.
In her new novel, Between, Georgia, she tells the story of a woman connected to two warring families, trying to find her place in both of them while their generations-old feud rages through their small town.
