Book Review: South of the Etowah - Family Life Publications

Annell Gerson

Defining southern literature can be tricky. Must the author be southern-born? Must the story be set in the south? Must it deal with southern social issues, include southern dialect, and/or reflect the southern values of the time period? Not surprisingly, answers vary depending upon who you ask. However, those of us who love southern literature just know it when we read it.

Thus, when readers delve into Raymond Atkins South of the Etowah: The View from the Wrong Side of the River, smiles of recognition spread jaw to jaw, laughter erupts intermittently, and affirmative nods accent the recognition of shared memories, and the realization quickly settles in this is southern writing at its finest.

South of the Etowah reads with the nostalgic voice, sharp wit and spellbinding storytelling reminiscent of Lewis Grizzard, Celestine Sibley or Rick Bragg. Like the works of these southern legends, Atkins reminds us of simple moments in our own lives, many scattered among the dust bunnies of our memories, which we didnt even know were there until we read one of his essays. Whether he writes of children, marriage, old cars, technology, ballet, first Christmas trees, moving day, breakfast at Waffle House or Shakespeare dinner theaters, the result is the same: stories filled with candor, humor, wisdom, self-deprecation and that indefinable southern voice (or as Atkins calls it, rural voice) that make his most recent book a remarkably entertaining collection of over 70 musings, all seen from the porch of his home, located south of the mighty Etowah River.

Atkins is the author of four novels. The Front Porch Prophet, was awarded the Georgia Author of the Year Award (GAYA) for first novel. Camp Redemption won the Ferrol Sams Award for fiction and the 2014 GAYA for fiction. Sweetwater Blues was a Townsend Prize nominee and 2015 GAYA runner-up for fiction. When not writing, Atkins teaches English at Georgia Northwestern Technical College and Creative Writing at Reinhardt University.