Here are three award-winning works of fiction with real-world messages that matter. I shared them this month on Good Day Alabama on WBRC Fox 6.
I’ve loved Barbara Kingsolver for decades. The Poisonwood Bible. The Bean Trees. This newest book, Demon Copperhead, recently won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Heartbreaking, but sometimes hilarious, too, this is the story of a boy named Damon, born to a teenaged single mother in a hand-me-down trailer in the mountains of southern Appalachia. He has his dead father’s good looks and striking coppery hair, some kindly neighbors, a mother who loves him the best she can and an unwavering talent for survival—but little else. When his mother overdoses—a very early victim of OxyContin—he becomes part of the foster-care system—and there’s very little “care” involved. He braves long days of forced child labor; he was hungry his entire 5th-grade year. He attends failing schools, sees firsthand how the opioid crisis is affecting his corner of the world and realizes that this beautiful place he calls home is mostly invisible to the rest of the country. Athletic prowess grants him a short reprieve and a mostly stable home for a while; two teachers recognize his intelligence and artistic ability, but terrible, dangerous pitfalls are everywhere. Demon, as he is known by everyone, is a little boy with a big heart who is forced to grow up way too quickly. This is a difficult but important book—an unflinching look at what’s happened in recent decades to many parts of rural America.
In addition to the shiny new Pulitzer, this book also was an instant bestseller across several platforms, a New York Times “Ten Best Books of 2022” and an Oprah’s Book Club Selection. Brace yourself, but do read it if you haven’t already. Kingsolver never disappoints.
Historical fiction done right! This is based on the true story of a record-breaking thoroughbred stallion named Lexington whose descendants still race today. Far more than a story about an extraordinary animal, though, this is a book about the early and little-known Black jockeys and trainers in the sport of horse racing. It was inspired by beautiful oil paintings of these men alongside some of the most famous horses in history, and ultimately, it’s a book about art and science and horse racing and race. This compelling novel ranges from Kentucky in 1850 to New York City in 1954 to Washington D.C. in 2019. There’s a discarded oil painting involved, along with a horse skeleton in the attic of the National Museum of Natural History. Both are mysteries that need solving. Before the Civil War, an enslaved groom named Jarret is raising a bay foal. Their unusual connection is captured by an itinerant young artist who paints the pair. In New York in the 1950s, an art dealer named Martha, an early proponent of contemporary art, becomes obsessed with a 19th-century equestrian oil painting owned for generations by her maid’s family. In 2019, in Washington, with the Black Lives Matter movement as a backdrop, Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, connect through a shared interest in one extraordinary horse—she’s studying the bones, he’s uncovering the provenance of a painting he plucked from a junk pile and writing about the lost history of the unsung Black trainers behind Lexington’s racing success.
With recent awful news about racehorses being put down in staggering numbers, this book is important in several ways. It’s also a true page-turner.
Everything Sad is Untrue (a True Story)
This is a book for teens, but there’s plenty here for adult readers, too. It’s an autobiographical coming-of-age story like no other. With the captivating storytelling ability of Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights, Daniel, known as Khosrou to his family, braves a hostile middle-school classroom in Oklahoma to tell beautiful tales of his family’s history (that goes back centuries), share colorful Persian folklore and ancient stories, and explain how he and his mother and sister became refugees. This last happened when his mother became a Christian in a country where that was a capital offense. With a midnight flight from the secret police (bribing their way onto a plane-to-anywhere), a brief stopover at a Middle Eastern palace, the sad refugee camps in Italy and finally asylum in the U.S., it certainly sounds fantastical to Daniel’s skeptical classmates. But ultimately, this is a true story that took Nayeri years to come to terms with and then to write and share. This book won the Michael L. Printz Award, the Christopher Award and the Middle East Book Award. It was a National Indie Bestseller, an NPR Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Best of the Year.
I link to Amazon to show you exactly what book I’m talking about, but I love to shop locally at Church Street Coffee and Books, The Alabama Booksmith, Little Professor, and Thank You Books in Crestwood. And I visit my local library often in person and online!
savor 