If you ever wondered what it would be like to live as a monk or a nun, this book delves deeply into the subject. In this extremely well-written and heartfelt memoir, “Cloistered: My Years as a Nun” (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), Catherine Coldstream begins by taking us back to her life as a young woman who has many talents, is smart, well-read, is multilingual, energetic, adventuristic and living a dreamed of life in Paris after having grown up in the UK.

As I peruse the shelves in the Jackson County Library’s “new releases” section, it is evident to me that there are more new titles written by women than by men. And while this may be true in literary circles in much the same way it is in politics these days, many of the storylines in these books being written by women have to do with a feminine renaissance that is going on world-wide.

In a book written in a first-person, vulnerable and intimately entertaining narrative oral storytelling voice, Ken Smith takes us through his entire life — of youthful globe-trotting adventure and hardship, to an eventual life of self-sufficiency and spiritual awareness in Scotland.

In a remarkable book that combines eco-poetry, poetic prose and personal and scientific information by award-winning African-American ornithologist and professor at Clemson University, J. Drew Lanham, birds are the major focus, with Lanham even giving us a semi-humorous list of rules for birders.

Having just recently written a review for these pages of an anthology made up of multiple writers published in 2023 with a similar title that was edited by Ervin Laszlo, I am taking the liberty to review the much more singular and shorter primer that Laszlo wrote in 2022 prior to putting together his large anthology.

Ervin Laszlo (Nobel Peace Prize nominee, science philosopher and founder of the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research) and David Lorimer (chair of the Galileo Commission and editor of Paradigm Explorer) are the authors of  the anthology “The Great Upshift” (Light On Light Press, 2023, 384 pages), a book that author Gregg Braden says “… reveals practical steps to awaken a heartfelt world based in love rather than a bleak future born of fear.” 

“Caledonia” was the Latin name used by the Roman Empire to refer to the part of Great Britain that lies north of the River Forth, which includes most of the land area of Scotland.

Recently, I was told about a book titled “The Design Pathway For Regenerating Earth” (Earth Regenerators Press, Barachara, Columbia, 2021, 219 pages) by author Joe Brewer.

For those of you who don’t know her, Julia Nunnally Duncan is an award-winning freelance writer and author of 11 books of nonfiction, fiction and poetry who is a native of Western North Carolina whose hometown is Marion.

The Covid pandemic has produced many new books with many of them addressing the current situation in which we humans find ourselves and the pressing issues that we need to address.

Ron Rash’s new novel “The Caretaker” (Doubleday, 2023, 252 pgs.) is much different than his previous novels.

Asheville’s award-winning author Charles Frazier has a new novel just out this month (“The Trackers,” Ecco/Harper Collins, April 2023, 324 pages). Unlike his previous books, this one doesn’t hunker down and focus mostly on Western North Carolina, but instead starts us out in a rural town in Wyoming where a painter, Val Welch, has traveled from the east coast to create a New Deal Depression-era mural commissioned for the local post office. For the first 100 pages or so, we’re in Dawes, Wyoming, at the sprawling ranch of a wealthy and politically ambitious 20th century impresario, cattle baron and art collector John Long and his Western swing-band singing wife, Eve, where Val has been invited to stay while painting his mural in the nearby town. In a book where we get Frazier’s typical well-researched and detailed writing style, here we get a descriptive painting of ranch life and personality portraits of his main characters, which also includes Long’s right-hand man, Faro, who is a throw-back cowboy to the wild West and who has stories about his personal interactions with historical icons such as Crazy Horse and Billy the Kid.

Somehow in the last couple years scanning the stacks and shelves of our local library and indie bookstore, I missed seeing an important book focused on and designed for the times we are living in. “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth” (The Golden Sufi Center Publishing, 309 pages, 2021), edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, is a compendium of essays and poems addressing all the requisite issues that the word “ecology” implies. 

“Appalachia can give us an eye towards how the national personality refracts like a diamond into a thousand rays” — Imani Perry 

“If there is magic on the planet, it is contained in water.” — Loren Eiseley

It’s not often that one finds a book that is both sensibly spiritual and a very fun read. But such was the case on my reading of Jaimal Yogis’ coming-of-age, non-fiction memoir “Saltwater Buddha” (Wisdom Publications, 2009, 238 pages). 

Baron Wormser, who is a former Poet Laureate of Maine, has a new novel titled “Some Months in 1968” (Woodhall Press, 2022, 344pgs) that has an image of a draft card on the cover and is a must-read for all of us 1960s Boomers.

Once in a great while, something unexpected and exceptional crosses my desk. In this case it was a gift from a friend and a new book by our recent U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo — a tome written during the global pandemic when she obviously had the opportunity to find some quiet time and reflect. She has emerged in her new book “Catching the Light” (Yale University Press, 2022) as a kind of visionary. 

Another regional writer has just published a new book. Janisse Ray, whom I know as an original member of the Southern Nature Project (www.southernnature.org) and author of “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood,” is winner of many major national literary awards as well as being inducted as a member of the Georgia Literary Hall of Fame. A Georgia native, she is a neighbor of ours here in the Southern Appalachians, which is where her new book and her first novel takes place. 

Wilma Mankiller was the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995. She was an activist for many Native American and progressive social causes and programs throughout her adult life and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

“Crowded By Beauty” (University of California Press, 2015) is the poetic title of the most recent biography of Philip Whalen. Who was Philip Whalen? As the author David Schneider describes him:

“We must unhumanize our view a little, and become confident / As the rock, and ocean that we were made from.” — Robinson Jeffers

I’ve said it before — our local authors are “going to town” these days, and in this case quite literally. 

“Eleutheria” is the Greek word for “freedom.” It is also the reference name of an island in the Bahamas (Eleuthera). And it is the title and the setting for Allegra Hyde’s first novel (Vintage Books, 2022). 

Having grown up in these Cherokee hills, I became interested in things native from an early age. This interest, spawned by my boyhood friends over on the Snowbird Reservation, has continued throughout my life and until today. 

In my recent passion and ongoing interest in reviewing books by local and regional authors, I am offering here, yet another from our cache of talented writers that are close to home. In this case, it’s a book just released in the month of June by regionally heralded Hub City Press in Spartanburg, S.C., just over the North Carolina line.

It’s not often, if ever, that I would review a book about “how to succeed in business.” But I’m in the mood and the mode for reviewing books by local authors, and as I said in my last review in these pages our local authors have been hard at it during the pandemic cranking out new volumes of interesting, innovative and important work. 

During the pandemic, regional authors have been busy. I’ve been made aware of several books being released this year by writers in our own back yard who have published books in several genres. 

I spent my boyhood living in Graham County in a community called Milltown in Robbinsville. In those days, there was still segregation amongst the white and Cherokee communities.

It’s rare to come across a book that takes one far afield from the original focus presented by the artist at hand. Most books aim to keep the reader “at home,” so to speak, not venturing out and about into uncharted or unrelated territory.

“The story can’t be about the heroism of one person any more, it has to be about the heroism of communities.” — Barry Lopez

Manon Steffan Ros is a Welsh author of more than 40 books, writes in the Welsh language and has only this fall published her latest novel, “The Blue Book of Nebo” (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2021) which has already won several literary prizes in Wales. 

I was recently gifted with the loan of a book from my friend Lee Knight titled “Wilma Mankiller,” (TWODOT Books, 2021) written by journalist and biographer D.J. Herda. As a traveling lecturer for the Road Scholar Program, Lee had finished reading it and thought I might find it interesting.

Steve Brooks is a prolific artist, poet and writer who has lived in Asheville for 10 years now, having moved to the mountains of western North Carolina from San Francisco via Seattle, Washington. Having been privy to and enjoyed several of his recent books, his latest collection of prose poems “Joy Among the Catastrophe” (Amazon/Kindle Editions, 2021) written in the past two years during the pandemic lockdown took me by surprise and really got my attention. 

Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki, Japan, is an award-winning author whose accolades include The Nobel Prize and the Booker Prize. His novels, such as “The Remains of the Day” have been made into major motion pictures. 

Joy Harjo is the current Poet Laureate of the United States. She is “Native,” “Indigenous,” of the Muscogee/Creek (Mvskoke) “Native Nations” as she likes to identify herself. I have followed her and her work — as a poet in the literary tradition and warrior in the tribal, indigenous tradition — for a long time. Long enough to watch her grow from a budding young poet to the wisdom-keeper she has now become in her early seventies. 

In my younger years, I used to do a lot of hiking. I would follow footpaths and trails or blaze my own way through the woods or along streams and rivers. While those trailblazing days are over, I get my more physical outdoor thrills vicariously from writers like Robert Moor, who travels all over the planet experiencing different ecosystems and terrain to whet his appetite and intellect.

Every once in a while I like to go back and read the classics, especially those that have managed to bypass my attention and my gaze. 

Asheville’s own Terry Roberts is back again with another page-turner in the form of a brand new novel just released late last month. 

As a reader, I tend to get on jags with authors whom I admire. Recently, I’ve discovered the work of Baron Wormser and have reviewed his nonfiction memoir of living off the grid in New England for 25 years in these pages. An amazing story, an amazing writer. I wanted to read more of his work. 

In a literary genre (Appalachian noir) dominated by men, Amy Jo Burns’ new novel Shiner breaks through barriers and the unspoken publisher-induced rules of the genre — conflict, conflict, conflict — and comes out on the other side with a compelling story that has an interior rather than a dark, action-driven or plot-driven narrative.

Toward the end of 2020, I reviewed a book here titled The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron. This was fiction and a novel based on actual anthropological research giving the reader a camera-eye look into the lives of the last full-blood Neanderthals to inhabit Europe. Cameron had done her homework and had written a captivating story.

If the word “value” is to mean anything, it should at least apply to two or more things. First it should refer to monetary worth, and second, and more importantly, it should refer to appreciation of higher consciousness regarding human experience. 

If you are like me and have been more than somewhat stranded by the pandemic for the past year or more and are succumbing to cabin fever and the isolation blues and are looking  forward to getting out and about or even doing some traveling, then I have a suggestion.

News flash: Buncombe County author Wayne Caldwell is also a poet! Evidenced by his just-released collection Woodsmoke (Blair Publications, Durham) we are treated to a life in the Western North Carolina mountains from the perspective of an elder gentleman who has lived, according to a multi-generational tradition, the old ways.

David  Suzuki is an internationally renowned geneticist and environmentalist and is the author of more than 40 books and recipient of many national and international awards for his writing and his scientific work. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. His book The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision For Our Sustainable Future (Greystone Books, 113 pages) is part autobiography, part history and part basic science, but above all, it is a plea for the planet. 

“I make a prayer for words. Let me say my heart.” — M. Scott Momaday

As the winner of almost all of  the major awards given to American authors, N. Scott Momaday has topped off a long and celebrated career this year with another landmark book, Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land (Harper Collins, 2020, 68 pgs), that to me seems like something of an epitaph with which to conclude his list of publications. It’s a small book you can hold in your hands and contains only 68 pages. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in quality. 

As someone who was an anthropology major in college and have been somewhat obsessed by the truth behind the idea of human evolution, discovering best-selling, prize-winning Canadian author Claire Cameron’s 2017 novel, The Last Neanderthal (Little Brown & Co., 2017, 273 pages), not only came as a surprise, but as I began reading, soon became a revelation. Instinctively, I have never cottoned to Darwin’s ideas or path to contemporary human existence. It’s too linear, too set in stone for variation or the unexpected or the undiscovered.