Novelist Gerald Duff grew up both in Polk County, in Deep East Texas, and in Nederland, near the Gulf Coast, two drastically different areas in terms of social and economic status, and the way they interact. These communities shaped the way Duff thought and lived, causing him to build up certain false personae to fit in with the crowd. These changes and more are described within the pages of Duff's new memoir, Home Truths: A Deep East Texas Memory . From dealing with intrusive family members to judgmental classmates to marital bliss and misery, Duff's memoir describes situations familiar to...

"Blue Sabine is a big, spellbinding novel, as deep and complex as the Texas river for which it's named. The mystery and relevance of the past is Gerald Duff's great theme, as he masterfully traces one family's history from the Civil War to the present day. His great characters are all astonishing storytellers, with true and compelling voices that will ring in my head forever."
--Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger and On Agate Hill

"Blue Sabine [is] a veritable saga of insights, intimacies and intimations. The characters are obsessed with their family, and...

"Decoration Day and Other Stories" ranges in locale from the piney woods of Deep East Texas, to the mean streets of Memphis, to the suburbs of Washington, DC. Highly comic and deeply serious, the collection reaches from the late 19th century to the present day. The title story centers on elderly sisters striving to save an unjustly accused man from a lynch mob, while at the same time fetch home a wagonload of flowering bushes to commemorate their dead in the family cemetery. Captive to private delusions and bound to dreams of what ought to be, each character in Duff's eleven stories struggles...

"Playing Custer" is a novel narrated from varying points of view and time, illuminating personal and political events leading up to the death of General George Armstrong Custer. The historic events are framed by the story of two men from the late twentieth century--one white and one Native American--who travel together to the annual reenactment of the battle at the Little Bighorn National Monument battlefield.
Chatting during their journey, the two reenactors discuss their obsessions, personal ambitions, and failures of nerve. Interwoven with their progress toward the battle are...

Nashville Burning is set in three Aprils, those of 1967, '68, and '69, in Music City. In the first, after an event at Vanderbilt University featuring Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Allen Ginsburg, and Strom Thurmond, riots broke out in North Nashville, and that part of town burst into flame--as did self-satisfied notions about civil order and structure in Nashville and the South. The next April, after the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis, Nashville riots took place again, and fire claimed its function.

Nashville Burning presents characters caught up in...