I’ve managed to check off a couple of my choices for Maggie’s Southern Reading Challenge this week – finally!

First up was A Gracious Plenty by Sheri Reynolds, a compact novel set in small-town Virginia. Following up on the maelstrom that was Rapture of Canaan, after it was chosen as an Oprah book club selection, A Gracious Plenty is a complex tale, simply told. I just joined a book club at a local library, and Gracious was the book for this month, my first time attending this club. Never having read Rapture, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it was a pleasant enough read, particularly as it’s likely not a book I would ever have known about or read if it wasn’t for the book club. While I wouldn’t say it was one of my favorites this year, it presented enough provocative that it held my interest and had me thinking.

Finch Nobles lives alone as a caretaker for a cemetery that was cared for by her father before her. After a horrific accident as a small child, Finch, scarred both inside and out, has retreated from the outside world, and prefers to live amongst the graves of her cemetery, for that is where she interacts with those buried there. Finch isn’t the only one in her cemetery who is dealing with pain from the past – several of her ghostly companions are also still suffering. But they all come to find peace with their pasts, one way or another, as Finch comes to realize that perhaps life among the living may not be as horrible as she thought. A story that could take other writers hundreds and hundreds of pages to tell, Reynolds has distilled hers to just two hundred, while still managing to write in an evocative style whose language and imagery shimmers on the page.

I’d actually begun my second book weeks ago, on my trip to Myrtle Beach. I read about halfway, and then the book has sat on my nightstand since returning home. I have a habit of ignoring books that were unfinished during holidays, unless they real page turners. And while I enjoyed Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, its meandering style and contemplative nature didn’t have me glued to the page. So, it took awhile to get back into it. Janisse Ray grew up living next to her father’s junkyard business in a small town on the southern edge of Georgia. Part memoir, part environmental tract, Ray presents her readers with poignant vignettes of both her family and her beloved longleaf pines, and calls to mind Annie Dillard’s modern classic, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Ray had me referring to my Audubon Field Guide so much that I kept it beside me when reading. She refers to so many species of flora and fauna, and in such love and awe, that you can’t help but want to know what these plants and creatures look like. One of my favorite passages in the book is when she pens an imaginary letter from John James Audubon to John Bachman, for whom he named Bachman’s sparrow. The letter is penned from heaven, and it’s whimsical style complements the wonderful portrayal of the afterlife and what happens to earth’s extinct species. Another passage that made me smile and nod in recognition was when she described her grandmother’s love for wrestling on television. I well remember my own nan sitting in her rocking chair, knitting needles clicking and clacking, while she watched professional wrestling, whooping and hollering. What is it about old women and men in tights?