This is the story of Virginia Turner Ballard, know to her North Carolina relatives as Ginny Sue. It's also the story of her mother, her grandmother, her great aunts, her closest cousin--three generations of women who gather around Virginia to help her at the end of a hard pregnancy, to tend to her, to help her prepare for the fourth generation. This kind of family attendance, this kind of tending to, is Southern to the core, offering, as it does, the occasion for reviving and trading entwined family stories. Tending to Virginia is a novel of one family's most important stories--how they happened, how they were perceived, how they were remembered, how their truth is revealed. In the end, an eruption of family confessions becomes revelation--revelation as legacy, passed down among a family's women; revelation as a family's gift in celebration of growing up, a process Jill McCorkle knows lasts into old age. In her characterizations of these vivid women playing out their generational roles in the contemporary South, McCorkle presents us with a powerful insight--that the strongest family bonds are, for better or worse, as often created by what is held back as by what is spoken.

Understanding Jill McCorkle introduces readers to the novels and short story collections of Jill McCorkle's growing canon. Since 1984 McCorkle has written five novels and two books of short stories, entering the publishing world, as one reviewer noted, with the literary equivalent of a rebel yell. Filling the gap of critical study on McCorkle, Barbara Bennett analyzes the widely read and admired output of this prolific southern woman writer. Bennett identifies and discusses the diverse characters, thematic concerns and keen sense of language that distinguish McCorkle's work.

In a community where conformity flourishes, seeds of Rhoda’s odd behavior were planted long ago. Can she cultivate her relationships with the same care and tenderness that she gives her beloved garden? Old Order Amish Rhoda Byler’s unusual gift and her remarkable abilities to grow herbs and berries have caused many to think her odd. As rumors mount that Rhoda’s “gift” is a detriment to the community, she chooses isolation, spending her time in her fruit garden and on her thriving canning business. Miles away in Harvest Mills, Samuel King struggles to keep his family’s apple orchard profitable. As the eldest son, Samuel farms with his brothers, the irrepressible Jacob and brash Eli, while his longtime girlfriend Catherine remains hopeful that Samuel will marry her when he feels financially stable. Meanwhile, Samuel’s younger sister Leah is testing all the boundaries during her rumschpringe, and finds herself far from home in Rhoda’s garden after a night of partying gone badly. But Leah’s poor choices serve as a bridge between Rhoda and the King family when a tragic mistake in the orchard leaves Samuel searching for solutions. Rhoda’s expertise in canning could be the answer, but she struggles with guilt over the tragic death of her sister and doesn’t trust herself outside her garden walls. As the lines between business, love, and family begin to blur, can Rhoda finally open up to a new life? And what effect will this odd, amazing woman have on the entire King family?

A Southern Weave of Women is one of the first sustained treatments of the generation women writers who came of age in the post-World War II South as well as one of the first to situate southern literature fully within a multicultural context

How to keep any garden looking its best, through the seasons and through the years. Gardening is the primary recreational activity of Americans. Since the 1980s, when gardening caught fire as a national passion, we have spent billions of dollars on what we grow for our own pleasure; and in all that time, not one book has been published on the broad subject of garden maintenance. For twenty-five years, the Haywards, expert horticultural consultants and authors of many books and articles, have been tending their own garden in Vermont. Here, beautiful photographs illustrate how and what the Haywards do in their garden from earliest spring until snowfall: pruning trees and shrubs; planting, staking, and dividing perennials; and edging, deadheading, and weeding. They also include many tips for reducing maintenance. Their advice can be put to work in the reader's garden, regardless of size or location. Line drawings by Elayne Sears give more details on specific techniques. Anecdotal, encouraging, and crammed with information, this is a gorgeous treatment of a very practical subject.

The therapeutic methods of famous family therapist Virginia Satir are described, exemplified, and then illustrated by a complete annotated verbatim transcript of a 70-minute therapy session in which Satir helps a woman forgive her mother. Appendices: Presuppositions, the importance of physical contact, Accessing cues, and a Satir meditation.