Books Set in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee

Book Summary

Anna Kate’s grandmother owned the Blackbird Cafe in the small town of Wicklow, Alabama. When Granny passes away, Anna Kate returns to Wicklow to settle her estate. She intended it to be a very quick trip, but for some reason she finds herself drawn to the quirky town that her mother ran away from many years ago. She wants to get to know the people of Wicklow, including her father’s side of the family, and she wants to learn more about the mysterious blackbird pie everybody is talking about.

As she discovers the truth about her past, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird can finally take her broken wings and fly.

Book Summary

Inspired by the true events of Operation Paperclip, this historical fiction novel tells the story of the US intelligence program that employed former Nazis in Huntsville, Alabama after WWII.

The story begins in Berlin in 1930. Changing political powers are sweeping through Germany. Sofie von Meyer Rhodes and her husband, Jürgen, are concerned with the social views taking hold in their country. But her academic husband’s work benefits from the ambitions of the newly elected chancellor. Soon, however, their morality is challenge and they realize that neutrality has a price.

At the same time, Lizzie Miller is living in the Texas panhandle during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The future looks bleak as their farm dries up. And that’s all before her brother, Henry, is called to Germany to fight in WWII.

Twenty years later in the 1950s, Jürgen is one of the many German scientists who is offered a pardon for their part in WWII in exchange for working on the fledgling space program in the US. Sofie welcomes the chance for a fresh start in a new country, but she soon finds that her Huntsville neighbors aren’t as welcoming or forgiving of her family’s past as she’d hoped.

Jürgen’s boss at the US space program is Calvin Miller, Lizzie’s husband. This is where the two women’s stories collide.

Book Summary

You probably read this classic back in high school (or at least you were supposed to), but we recommend you give this famous book another read. Chances are you’ll get even more out of it this time around!

If you aren’t familiar with the story, it’s set in Alabama in 1933 and told from the perspective of a 6-year-old girl called Scout. Her widowed father, Atticus Finch, is a crusading local lawyer who risks everything to defend a black man accused of a terrible crime.

Book Summary

This novel is set in 1985 Alabama as gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode recounts her younger years to middle-aged Evelyn. Her stories transport you back to the 1930s when her friends Idgie and Ruth opened a cafe in tiny Whistle Stop, Alabama. While serving up good coffee and barbecue, the café was a place for friendship … and the occasional murder.

Book Summary

As a young attorney in Montgomery, Alabama, Bryan Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office dedicated to helping poor, incarcerated, and wrongly condemned defendants.

One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was wrongly convicted of the murder of a young white woman. He was sentenced to death despite the consistent declaration of his innocence.

Book Summary

Three women’s stories intertwine in the Florida Keys as a powerful hurricane approaches over the Labor Day weekend of 1935.

Key West native Helen Berner yearns to escape her abusive husband. Elizabeth Preston has traveled down from New York in search of a veteran of the Great War. Mirta Perez’s family suffered great losses in the Cuban Revolution of 1933, and now they have arranged her marriage to a man in a dangerous business, followed by a honeymoon in Key West.

The approaching storm is not the only danger that these women face as their paths unexpectedly cross.

Book Summary

In the 1920s, cities began to rise up from the Florida wetlands, from Coral Gables and Boca Raton to Miami Beach. The cities were developed with artistic vision and featured grand hotels that played host to the glitz and excess of the Roaring Twenties. Gambling was condoned, and prohibition was not enforced. This attracted tycoons, crooks, and celebrities alike. This rapid development also spawned a new subdivision civilization. The decade saw the largest human migration in US history – far exceeding the settlement of the west – as millions flocked to this new American frontier in the sunshine.

This non-fiction book examines the social, economic, and environmental impacts of this boom. It also shows how the decisions of three real estate moguls, combined with a once-in-a-century hurricane, triggered the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.

Book Summary

Mary Kay Andrews has been called the Queen of Beach Reads, and this is no expectation. Letty’s sister Tanya made her promise that if anything happened to her, Letty would take Tanya’s daughter Maya and run.

When Letty finds Tanya dead, she knows the murderer is Tanya’s ex, Evan, so she follows Tanya’s instructions to get out of town. Tanya left behind a go-bag of cash, and massive diamond ring, and a faded magazine article about a small mom-and-pop hotel in a Florida beach town.

She heads south to Florida with four-year-old Maya, trying to comfort the child and unravel her sister’s secrets while keeping a low profile among the locals, including the handsome police chief Joe. Sisterhood, romance, and mystery intertwine throughout almost 500 pages, which is great if you’re looking for a longer option.

Book Summary

This novel covers 110 years of Florida history in 400 pages as you watch the vast wilderness of 1858 transition into real estate wealth by 1968. You’ll watch the state’s evolution through three generations of the MacIvey family, starting with Tobias, who brought his wife and infant son to the swampy new frontier of Florida to start a new life. They start as very poor farmers, but work their way into being cattlemen, also known as Crackers at the time, for the sound of their whip as they rounded up cattle. 

Two generations later, Solomon is saddened to realize how much of the beautiful land was spoiled and exploited by human greed. In between these generations, the family faces endless challenges and will introduce you to a fascinating cast of side characters.

Book Summary

Georgia is an antique expert, specifically Limoges fine china. She enjoys studying the past of others while trying to forget her own. She left her coastal Florida home ten years ago, and never thought she’d return. 

When a job brings her back home, her grandfather’s apiary brings her unexpected peace. However, a run-in with her estranged mom and sister brings ghosts of the past back to the forefront of her life. 

Book Summary

Twelve-year-old Ceecee has a lot on her plate as the caretaker for her mentally-ill mom. While they live in Ohio and it’s 1967, her mom is convinced that it’s 1951 and she’s the Vidalia Onion Queen of Georgia. Soon, Ceecee is whisked away with a previously-unknown great-aunt, Tootie, who brings her to Savannah, where Tootie works trying to save historic homes from demolition.

The world of Savannah is full of eccentric characters that keep CeeCee entertained for the summer. However, just as she begins to find her sense of belonging in her new world, she’s reminded that her mom’s legacy may have left her destined for destruction.

Book Summary

This fictional novel is based on the true story of the Atlanta Child Murders, which claimed the lives of 28 children and young adults over a two-year period. The book is told from the perspectives of three 5th graders – Tasha, Rodney, and Octavia. 

Throughout the story, you’ll grow closer to each of the characters and experience the growing panic in Atlanta as new children go missing and then are confirmed dead. The book covers more of the characters’ lives outside the murders and is also referred to as a coming-of-age story of three black 5th graders in late 1970s Atlanta.

Book Summary

When Merilee got divorced, she moved with her children to the Atlanta suburb of Sweet Apple, Georgia. But as she tries to start fresh, her past follows her as an anonymous, local blog gossips about the scandal that ended her marriage. 

The cottage that Marilee is renting from the town’s gruff 93-year-old matriarch, Sugar Prescott, becomes her refuge, and Sugar becomes her ally. As Sugar shares stories about the town, she gets a different perspective on the shiny wealth surrounding her. However, she’s still drawn into that world via new friend Heather, whose life seems perfect. But in this small town, sins and secrets are abundant and keeping up appearances is vital.

Book Summary

In the early morning of May 2, 1981, shots rang out in a grand Savannah mansion. A question haunts the city’s moss-hung oaks and shaded squares for the next decade – was it murder or self-defense?

This is a work of non-fiction about a landmark murder case that reads like a spellbinding novel.

Book Summary

This novel follows a group of friends for twenty years of life in Charleston, starting in the 1960s. The main character and narrator, Leopold, is the son of a science teacher and former nun, who is now the school’s principal. After Leo’s brother commits suicide, the family struggles to resume any kind of normalcy and connection. 

Leo finds solace in a new group of friends. Sheba and Trevor are twins with an alcoholic mom and prison-escapee dad. Niles & Starla are siblings who ran away from a hard life in the mountains, and Molly is a socialite with a boyfriend named Chadworth Rutledge the 10th. The group will experience highs and lows over twenty years, from 1960s counterculture to the 1980s AIDS crisis.

Book Summary

On Mallow Island, off the coast of South Carolina, sits an old cobblestone building in the shape of a horseshoe. It’s called the Dellawisp, named after the tiny turquoise birds who reside there alongside its human tenants. The building has an air of magical secrecy.

When 19-year-old Zoe inherits her late mother’s apartment at the Dellawisp, she meets the quirky and secretive neighbors, including a henna artist, a lonely chef, middle-aged sisters (one of whom is a hoarder), and three ghosts. The property is overseen by Frasier, who has a special affinity for the birds.

When one of the residents turns up dead, the other neighbors search for answers, but each is also hiding secrets of their own. The investigation leads to the island’s famous but reclusive author and to a long-lost relative of the sisters.

Book Summary

In 1739 when she was 16, Eliza’s father left his three plantations in her hands as he pursued military ambitions. However, he also spent all the money from the estates, leaving her in a terrible position. Failure would have been fine with her mother, who would prefer they leave South Carolina behind and return to England. 

Eliza finds hope for the plantations in an unlikely place. She has heard that the French will pay exorbitant amounts for indigo dye, one of the state’s largest exports. However, the process of making the dye is a closely guarded secret. Eliza will do just about anything to gain the knowledge she needs to save her family’s finances.

Book Summary

Judith Kratt is an affluent 75-year-old woman living in her family’s grand, but aging, mansion in South Carolina. It’s the home she’s known all of her life, and one she hasn’t left since 1929. It’s now the 1980s, and Judith and Olva, the old family maid, spend long, slow afternoons rocking on the front porch.

When Judith learns that her sister, Rosemarie, is coming for a visit for the first time in 60 years, she decides it’s time to take inventory of the home. This includes everything she inherited from the Kratt family – the cut-glass letter opener, the pie safe, the copper clock, and the murder that no one talks about.

As Judith catalogs her possessions, the story is interwoven with chilling flashbacks from the fateful night in 1929 that changed everything. Through her list-making, she begins to piece together her family’s influence on their small cotton town and to acknowledge the devastating effects of their dark family secrets.

Book Summary

Dellarobia had dreams of college, but she gave that up to marry Cub when she accidentally got pregnant at 17. After a difficult decade in an unhappy marriage on their failing Tennessee farm, she begins flirting with a younger man. One day, while hiking up a rural mountain road in Appalachia to meet this man, she spots what appears to be a lake of fire in the forested valley below. She soon learns that what she saw are actually millions of Monarch butterflies covering the trees. But why are these butterflies so far off course from their normal winter home in Mexico? Soon, scientists, religious leaders, tourists, and the media descend on the town, each offering their own explanations.

This book strikes a nice balance between storytelling, science, and sociology – all with wonderful character development. While the specific biological event described in the book is fictional, Kingsolver says, in her author’s note, that “the rest of the biological story…is unfortunately true.”

Book Summary

This novel examines the uneasy relationship between the National Park Service and the people whose land was used to create Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

In 1931, Rosie’s Smoky Mountain home was in the path of the Tennessee Great Smokies Park Commission as they set out to create a new national park. Rosie insists she’ll never give up her land, and a compromise offers her and her disabled sister the opportunity to stay for her lifetime. She forms a bond with an ornithologist who is conducting a bird survey for the park, but this friendship only deepens the rift between her and the other mountain folk who are suspicious of government connections.

Eighty-five years later, Kieran heads back to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in search of answers about her great-grandmother’s mysterious death. She meets a park historian named Zach, who may be the key to finding answers and a precious family heirloom. But when Kieran clashes with government regulations, will Zach block her from solving this family mystery?

Book Summary

Say Nashville, and most people immediately think of the city’s music scene. In this novel, one of country music’s superstars joins with one of the best storytellers to create a thriller about a young singer/songwriter searching for a future in Nashville that will allow her to outrun her past.

The audiobook recording of this novel features a full cast, including one part narrated by Dolly Parton herself. Reviewers say this book is perfect for fans of the Nashville TV drama series.

Book Summary

Oak Ridge, Tennessee didn’t even exist before 1942, and didn’t appear on any maps until 1949. The town was created from scratch as one of the Manhattan Project’s secret cities, and at the height of WWII, it was home to 75,000 – many of them young women recruited from small towns throughout the southern US.

All of the women working in Oak Ridge knew that something big was happening, but the penalty for talking about even the most mundane details of their work was eviction, so few of them pieced together the true nature of their work. But when the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, the secret was out – the women of Oak Ridge had been enriching uranium to build the atomic bomb.

Through historical research and interviews with dozens of the surviving women – many of whom still call Oak Ridge home – Denise Kiernan tells the story of the science and the women in a format that makes this the perfect book for fans of Hidden Figures and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.