Me and Patsy Kickin' Up Dust: My Friendship With Patsy Cline by: Loretta Lynn

 Author: Loretta Lynn
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Pages: 240

From Amazon: 

Loretta Lynn and the late Patsy Cline are legends—country icons and sisters of the heart. For the first time ever Loretta tells their story: a celebration of their music and their relationship up until Patsy's tragic and untimely death.
Full of laughter and tears, this eye-opening, heartwarming memoir paints a picture of two stubborn, spirited country gals who'd be damned if they'd let men or convention tell them how to be. Set in the heady streets of the 1960s South, this nostalgia ride shows how Nashville blossomed into the city of music it is today. Tender and fierce, Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust is an up-close-and-personal portrait of a friendship that defined a generation and changed country music indelibly—and a meditation on love, loss and legacy.

My Thoughts:

    I've been a Loretta Lynn fan since I was a toddler riding along with my dad in his pick up. He had two 8 track tapes in that truck: Johnny Cash & Loretta Lynn. If  you have read Coal Miner's Daughter and Still Woman Enough, you know about Patsy and Loretta's famous friendship. Here, Loretta tells the story in her own words: how they met, the secrets they shared....this is a truly beautiful story of a friendship that ended in tragedy when Patsy died at age 30. A beautiful, uncomplicated read, I highly recommend this book for  your next weekend book binge. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I did. It will haunt you long after you are finished reading.

Read this book if:

    *you love Loretta Lynn & Patsy Cline
    *you love biographies and memoirs
    *you love country music
    *you love warm stories about friendship

Miss Pearly's Girls: A Captivating Tale of Family Healing by: Reshonda Tate Billingsley

 Publisher:Dafina  Pages:272

From Amazon:

Raising four very different daughters on her own in rural Arkansas wasn't easy for Miss Pearly Bell. And she's always regretted that the sisters went their separate ways for good—and never wanted to see each other again. But when Pearly is stricken with a terminal illness, she summons them all home—determined to somehow help them get right with each other and forgive...But that means dealing with past secrets and lies first.
 
As the oldest sister, pastor's wife Maxine took her responsibility way too seriously—and never fails to judge everyone else. But a secret she can no longer keep will explode everything she stands for. Youngest sister Leslie is all about making a very different life with her new love—but she didn't expect a shattering past truth to be suddenly revealed and uproot everything she ever thought she knew. Elegant PR professional Stella and her earthy twin, Star, don’t see eye-to-eye on anything—and now a long-ago deception could wipe out their last chance at a relationship.
 
Soon each sister must confront the illusions they've taken refuge in for so long and deal with each other woman-to-woman. But can building an all-too-fragile trust repair the damage done—and help them come together when they are needed most?

My thoughts:

This is a wonderful book about sisters, family, daughters and mothers & healing. It is a story about love, both romantic & familial. There are secrets around every corner. Each sister has dealt with the past in her own way and none of those ways are especially healthy, with the exception of one. ( I don't want to add spoilers.) This story is told, in turn, through the eyes of each sister. The author does an amazing job of fleshing out the characters. We see them as they are- the good, the bad & the ugly. This is an unforgettable story.

Read this book if:

    *you love southern fiction

    * you love African American fiction

    *you love family sagas

    *you love stories about sisters

Memphis: A Novel by Tara M. Stringfellow

 Publisher: The Dial Press Pages:272

From Amazon:

    Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.

Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

My Thoughts:

    This book is hard to put down. The author has a beautiful writing style. She can paint a million pictures with a simple sentence. This is a beautiful story of 4 generations of women living in the family home in a Memphis neighborhood. It is a story of family, sisters, and the struggles that single mothers face.It is a story of survival. It is a story of finding one's own truth and following one's dreams. I loved this book and I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Read this book if....

    *you love African-American literary fiction

    *you love southern fiction
    *you  love stories about sisterhood & family
    *you love family sagas