Alabama Listening in the Cold War Era

Alabama Listening, by award-winning, Alabama author Susan Shehane, is a narrative memoir about growing up near Montgomery, Ala., at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, as the daughter of a storytelling roalroader, in a time when "everyone had pictures of George Wallace and his wife Lurleen" in their pine-paneled dens. " The memoir depicts the struggles children of racist parents underwent, and the inherited history that implies. Shehane's father was a gospel singer and a storyteller, and her life as a writer and a musician coincided with her coming to terms with the ambiguous lives of her parents. While Alabama Listening is not a political book, it describes the political landscape of her childhood. The title refers to many aspects of the book, including the Southern heritage of front-porch storytelling, learning to listen not only to stories but to one's own heart, and the author's own struggle to overcome the fear that gripped her as the standoffs in her own family mirrored world tensions. Some critics have called the dialogue and the voices of the Southern past both "palpable and moving." Please visit coosariverbooks.com for other details.