Book Reviews

Title: The Spur & The Sash: Middle Tennessee, 1865: A Novel
Author: Robert Grede
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Dave Brown

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 159598092X

The Spur & The Sash is about a real person. Sergeant George Van Norman, a Yankee, was wounded in one of the last battles of the American Civil War, at Nashville. Left behind to recover when the armies marched on, he was ordered to guard a local plantation from January to July, 1865, where he fell in love with the owner's daughter. That much is fact. The story begins with his wounding at the battle, follows him to the plantation where he meets the woman, her family, and the former slaves who have been emancipated but have no place to go. George befriends a former Confederate soldier and, together, they overcome carpetbaggers, deserters from both sides, mobs of wandering blacks, and bushwhackers marauding throughout Middle Tennessee, including precursors of the Ku Klux Klan. Meticulously researched using letters, diaries, and official records, this is a story of passion and betrayal amid the anarchy of postwar Tennessee. George left behind a spur and a sash, passed down through the generations to the author, his great-great-grandson, along with the story of how he came to have them. This is that story.

Title: USERNAME
Author: Joyce Faulkner
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Reviewer: Jim Greenwald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 9780983493020

Identity theft, scams, and a serial killer. Username is a must-read for every person who has a credit card or uses the Internet. Who’s using your name? Your username? You may not know until it’s too late. See yourself as a mark through the eyes of Maureen and Jennifer, master identity thieves. Their scams will shock you as you realize how vulnerable you are. Then there is the nice gentleman you could meet in a chat room, or perhaps he sends you a persuasive e-mail. He couldn’t possibly be a serial killer … could he?

Title: Emotional melange
Author: Jim Greenwald
Genre: Poetry
Reviewer: Sandra Linhart

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1462620067

The poet distills words into emotional textures that weave themselves into and through our lives.
Lyrical in ways, covering the gamut of emotions, this his tenth book of poetry tugs at the heart strings, and illuminates the dark corridors of love.
This is a journey of life’s experiences. Sit back, relax and enter this reading journey with tissues in hand.

Title: With Pen & Feather
Author: Jim Greenwald
Genre: Poetry, Book of Poetry, Native American
Reviewer:

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1424118743

This is a work of friendship, of sharing. We decided to join together in an effort to write something that was a bridge of thoughts and ideas. That allowed each of us to express what we feel, have felt and experienced.The words we wrote hold a special meaning to us, they are part of us and come from within. We included poems and stories. Stories are how things and events are handed down - it is oral history and the means by which history was preserved amongst the tribes. Your journey through this book will see us speak of love, emotion, of messages, feelings and a concern for this planet earth (Mother Earth). It is a message of mixed cultural thoughts, an expression of our Native American and non-native cultures. We hope you enjoy your journey with us. We hope to connect with you through our words and thoughts expressed in our writings. If one person sees the meaning and love that life holds, our work will have stood for something good.

Title: The Dying of Mortimer Post
Author: Barry Ozeroff
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Reviewer: Richard Barone

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1603182020

A tortured soul spends a lifetime struggling to make sense of a senseless world...

Mortimer Post is the quintessential product of late 1960's America. A college-bound physics major from a good family, he is engaged to his high-school sweetheart and is at the forefront of the American dream. That is, until twelve short minutes mark the end of his living and the beginning of his dying. But some deaths are slower than others, and Mortimer's takes a lifetime to complete.

Spanning four of America's most significant decades, The Dying of Mortimer Post takes the reader from the protagonist's coming of age in the Pocono Mountains to the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. After the searing end of his military career, the reader accompanies Mortimer on a nationwide quest for understanding and healing. On this journey of discovery, he finds both happiness and sorrow in the backwoods of rural Mississippi, then a much darker side of himself on the unforgiving streets of Los Angeles. Only when he has lost everything and is finally ready for the release of death, does Mortimer discover he already has the one thing he's spent a lifetime seeking, and with it, the chance to finally live again.