Our legislature has an obsession with getting books out of the hands of young people, via a 2022 measure called the “Age Appropriate Materials Act” that was updated in 2024. 

A different approach would be more beneficial. What books involving Tennessee or Tennesseans should people be reading? My list is, by definition, subjective and incomplete — and I welcome others to add to it. 

Let’s start with some authors with strong Tennessee connections. Alex Haley’s “Roots” is a must, as are any of Cormac McCarthy’s novels. McCarthy moved to Knoxville when he was four, attended the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, and his first four novels were based on Appalachian or East Tennessee themes. Poet Nikki Giovanni spent formative years in Knoxville, as one can read in her essay “400 Mulvaney Street” and her poem “Knoxville, Tennessee.”

James Agree’s autobiographical novel “A Death in the Family” was based on his Knoxville childhood; it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958. Tad Mosel adapted the novel into the play “All the Way Home” which won the  Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1961. Mosel, one of my instructors at Syracuse University, confided to me that many of the Knoxville city scenes were based on his hometown of Steubenville, Ohio.

Historian Jack Neely has published some thoughtful works of Knoxville area history. Jack McElroy, former Knoxville New Sentinel editor, recently published “Citizen Carl [Magee]: The Editor Who Cracked Teapot Dome, Shot a Judge, and Invented the Parking Meter.”

Nashville is the setting for “Nothing to See Here”, by Kevin Wilson, a dark humor piece that includes a group of children who spontaneously combust when agitated. The iconic Tennessee singer and personality Dolly Parton and prolific mystery writer James Patterson collaborated on “Run, Rose, Run,” a thriller built around Nashville’s country music scene. Parton also deserves special praise for her Imagination Library, getting free books into the hands of more than three million kids every month.

For those who like historical romance novels, there’s “Christmas at Carnton” by Tamera Alexander. This piece is set in 1864 and wraps around brutal action and plantation life following the Battle of Franklin.

William Faulkner’s final novel, “The Reivers,” is a coming-of-age story of a boy and his friends who steal a relative’s car to go to Memphis in 1905. Vince Vawter’s award-winning “Paperboy” looks at 1950s Memphis society through the lens of an 11-year-old who takes over a friend’s paper route.

“Shiloh,” a sprawling 1952 work by Shelby Foote, who became known to many through his contributions to documentarian Ken Burns’ 1990 epic “The Civil War,” takes the reader along the banks of the Tennessee River to craft a fictional recreation of the Battle of Shiloh in1862, using narrators both blue and gray.

The non-fiction list should include the major environmental and political works by former Vice President Al Gore, notably the bestsellers “Earth in the Balance,” “An Inconvenient Truth, “ “The Assault on Reason” and “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.”

Jon Meacham, a biographer and historian based in Nashville, writes about American politics and civil rights, including “His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope.”  Meacham’s “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House” won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Legendary editor John Seigenthaler of the Tennessean led a fascinating life and was a superb journalist. A collection of his best interviews, “A Word on Words,” is worth a read.  

Both adult and children’s books are available on the native American Sequoyah. He was born in the late 1770s at Tuskegee, which now lies under Tellico Lake in Tennessee and effectively crafted and promoted a written language for Cherokee speakers.

These suggestions barely scratch the surface of Tennessee authors and subjects that make for good reading, and a good book is a summer vacation we all can enjoy spontaneously in any season.

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