What a doozy of a year this turned out to be! History may remember 2020 as a year of alienation—social distancing and political polarization—but Haywire Books was founded with the idea that books can help us better understand the world and connect us to each other. Below are some of the Haywire Books authors’ favorite reading of the year, the books that helped us make sense of a chaotic world.
From Heather Bell Adams:
In an unsettling year, reading remains my refuge, especially character-driven literary novels. Here are some recent titles I’ve especially enjoyed.
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey
Three siblings are forever changed by a chance encounter with violence. Set in 1999 in the English countryside, this poignant novel is both a page turner and a finely-woven study in characterization. As Livesey traces one afternoon’s ripple effects on the entire Lang family, I fell more in love with each of them.
Like Light, Like Music by Lana K. W. Austin
Emme McLean is back in Red River, Kentucky to prove her cousin innocent of murder and investigate why local women went half-mad on the same night. This novel—part mystery, part journey of self-discovery—sings like the best of mountain ballads, with sparkling characters and an immersive Appalachian setting.
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
In 1986, a young man dying of AIDS leaves New York to return to his hometown in rural Ohio. There he confronts heartbreaking resistance in the tightknit community and within his own family. Deeply moving and memorable, this powerful novel is getting lots of buzz—and every accolade is well-deserved.
Heather Bell Adams is the author of Maranatha Road (West Virginia University Press, 2017) and The Good Luck Stone (Haywire Books, July 2020). Learn more and purchase her latest novel here.
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From Patricia Henley:
I just finished Hill Women by Cassie Chambers, a memoir about the fierce, hard-working, and growth-minded women in the hills of Kentucky. Chambers is from a family that farmed, lived an isolated life, and she eventually went to law school at Yale. This book was a good antidote to Hillbilly Elegy.
Christopher Coake's You Would Have Told Me Not To is an addictive collection of some of the most honest stories I have ever read.
Sown in Earth by Fred Arroyo, a collection of essays, is a beautifully written book documenting the author's trajectory from growing up, as one blurb says, in "a household ravaged by poverty, alcoholism, and violence," to finding his rightful place among Latinx writers, and becoming an esteemed professor.
Every winter I like to find an author I haven't read enough of and read book after book by that writer. Last winter it was Penelope Lively. Her novels were a wonderful escape from the pandemic. The winter before it was Jean Thompson. Before that it was Tessa Hadley. This winter I want to read more James Salter.
Books I have cued up include Joan Frank's The Outlook for Earthlings, Lot by Bryan Washington, Soul Full of Coal Dust by Chris Hamby, and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.
Patricia Henley is the author of two novels, four short story collections, two chapbooks of poetry, a stage play, and numerous essays. Read more about her and purchase a special 20th anniversary edition of her award-winning novel Hummingbird House (Haywire Books, 2019).
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From Mark Powell
The older I get, the more I find myself returning to old books that have, over the years, become old friends: they comfort me, unsettle me, but most of all remind me of why I started writing in the first place. So much of my year was filled with revisiting writers like Olivia Manning, Emmanuel Carrère, and Don DeLillo. But that’s not to say there weren’t new books I loved.
The Last Taxi Driver by Lee Durkee and How Fire Runs by Charles Dodd White were novels that thrilled me for different reasons: one sad-hearted and darkly hilarious, one lit by a white-hot flame of violence, both compelling, human, and terribly important.
Kim Ghattas’ Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East is the most ambitious, readable, and necessary book on the region I’ve encountered.
Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo by Philippe Lançon is a meditation on violence and recovery that, in Proustian fashion, spirals out to encompass seemingly the entirety of Lançon’s existence.
Clare Carlisle’s Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard is indeed a restless Kierkegaardian biography of the man, while The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts by Scott Anderson is something of a post-mortem of the “American Century” that shifts from Berlin to Havana to Saigon.
Finally, I was riveted by Child of Light, Madison Smartt Bell’s biography of his old friend Robert Stone. Bell writes with all rough grace we’ve come to expect of him, describing a life that somehow balanced on so many of the fault lines of American life in the late 20th Century.
All in all, not a bad year to be a reader.
Mark Powell is the author of six novels, most recently Firebird (Haywire Books, 2020). Learn more and purchase his latest.
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From Jon Sealy
This year was a re-framing for me, in many ways, and my reading really took a hit. Nevertheless, I’m happy to recommend a few books from the year:
George Singleton, You Want More
Is Singleton the South’s best short story writer? He’s been spinning yarns about small-town life in South Carolina for years, and this compendium of his work is a great place to start if you’re not familiar with him. It’ll make you want to read more.
Anne Trubek, So You Want to Publish a Book
When I put out a craft book, So You Want to Be a Novelist, I had no idea there was a similarly titled, complementary book in the works. Trubek is the publisher of Belt Publishing, and this short nonfiction book is an excellent guide to the business side of publishing. I wish I’d read it fifteen years ago.
Jill Caugherty, Waltz in Swing Time
This debut novel is about a Depression-era musician in Utah, and it bounces between the character’s coming of age and the end of her life in assisted living. I like a novel with a big American canvas, a book that efficiently gives you the scope of a person’s life. That to me is what the best of fiction does.
Jon Sealy is an author and publisher of Haywire Books. His most recent book is a craft book and memoir, So You Want to Be a Novelist. Learn more here.