Smoke from Small Fires — Anne Powers

It's the 1950s. Picture Blackshale, Tennessee, with its home fires, small town ways, and postwar innocence - the perfect place for a girl to grow up. From her earliest days, an artistic spark has been smoldering in Anna Grace Tollett, and when the mountain turns dark and unnerving, creativity is all she has to weather the hard times. As an adult, she describes her art: It is about the rituals of our lives, we who live in the tribes of Appalachia, and the spook in the hollow, the voodoo of the mountains. In Smoke from Small Fires, happily off-tilt characters, bizarre events, and the gamut of human emotions stack up like a collage layered thick with compelling details. Rendered in visually rich prose, courageous Anna Grace and her quirky band of kin and friends rise above poignant trials that will color your mind's eye for a long time.