DG Martin interviews Pat Taylor - Fourth Down and Goal To Go Part history and part autobiography, Fourth Down and Goal To Go is the humorous and telling narrative by North Carolina native Pat Taylor. A popular local storyteller, Taylor has recorded his life in the Old North State through tales that stretch back as far as the Great Depression. Incorporating Southern humor and wit, Taylor’s accounts will spark laughter and recognition among any reader who grew up in the American South during...

DG Martin interviews Charles Frazier - Thirteen Moons Like North Carolinian Charles Frazier’s memorable first novel, Cold Mountain-a romantic epic detailing a Civil War deserter’s homeward odyssey that won the 1997 National Book Award and inspired a haunting 2003 feature film- Frazier’s long-awaited second novel, Thirteen Moons is the story of one man’s remarkable life, spanning a century of relentless change. At the age of twelve, an orphan named Will Cooper is given a horse, a key, and a...

DG Martin interviews Lee Smith- On Agate Hill It is 1872, Agate Hill, North Carolina. On her thirteenth birthday, Molly Petree peeps out the chink of a window from her secret hiding place up in the eaves of a tumbledown old plantation house to survey a world gone wild, all expectations overthrown, all order gone. “I know I am a spitfire and a burden,” she begins her diary. “I do not care. My family is a dead family, and this is not my home, for I am a refugee girl…but evil or good I will...

DG Martin interviews Angela Davis-Gardner - Plum Wine . Angela Davis-Gardner's novel Plum Wine features Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching in Tokyo in the 1960s, is set on a life-changing quest when her Japanese surrogate mother, Michi, dies, leaving her a tansu of homemade plum wines wrapped in rice paper. Within the papers Barbara discovers writings in Japanese calligraphy that comprise a startling personal narrative. With the help of her translator, Seiji Okada, Barbara begins...

DG Martin interviews Paul Leonard - Music of a Thousand Hammers-Inside Habitat for Humanity In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, former Habitat for Humanity CEO Paul Leonard shares his book Music of a Thousand Hammers: Inside Habitat for Humanity. Part memoir, part history of Habitat, and part expose, the Davidson University graduate ’s work provides a glimpse into the shattered world of an organization built on a solid foundation of trust.

DG Martin interviews Mark Ethridge - Grievances In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Charlotte resident and former Charlotte Observer reporter Mark Ethriddge shares his new novel Grievances —a story of newspapers, murder, and redemption— set in the rich scenery of a Savannah River town that time and justice have forgotten.

DG Martin interviews Art Chansky - Blue Blood In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, veteran journalist and author Art Chansky details the colorful, revered, and respected rivalry. Chansky has seen every Duke-Carolina game since 1968 and now gives audiences the never-before-told story behind the story of a sporting challenge that has polarized the nation.

DG Martin interviews Will Blythe - To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever What makes people invest their identities in what is elsewhere seen as "just a game"? What made North Carolina senator John Edwards risk alienating voters by telling a reporter, "I hate Duke basketball"? What makes people care so much? In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, author William Blythe explains that the answers have to do with class and culture in the South, and in his new book, To Hate Like This is to...

DG Martin interviews John Hart - King of Lies In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, John Hart explains how he created a literary thriller that is as suspenseful as it is poignant—a riveting murder mystery layered beneath the southern drawl of a humble North Carolina lawyer. The Durham native who grew up in Salisbury, shares his mastery of prose and plot that belie his newcomer status. An illuminating anatomy of a murder and the ripple effect it produces within a family and a community,...

DG Martin interviews Sarah Dessen - Just Listen In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Sarah Dessen shares this story of a year in the life of a family coming to terms with the imperfections beneath its perfect facade. During this special interview, the Chapel Hill native and University of North Carolina graduate reveals her unique perspective on the world of fiction for young adults and the local experiences that helped shape her latest best-selling work.

DG Martin interviews Kristin Henderson - While They’re at War In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Henderson, a military wife herself, reveals how her new book focuses on two very different women at Fort Bragg who are facing their husbands' first deployments. The author shares scenes from the lives of these women and illuminates the overwhelming costs of being married to the military—anticipatory grief; strongly enforced rules concerning infidelity; isolation and alienation from...

DG Martin interviews David Payne - Back to Wando Passo In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, the Payne shares his fast-paced adventure story filled with lyrical writing, wicked humor, and unforgettable characters. The Henderson, NC, native reveals how Back to Wando Passo propels its two love stories, linked by place through time, to a simultaneous crescendo of betrayal, revenge, and redemption, that asks whether the present is doomed to ceaselessly repeat the past— or if it can...

DG Martin interviews John Hope Franklin - Mirror to America In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, John Hope Franklin shares his personal legacy and the book that Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Severus Lewis has called “a great historian's autobiography that will serve as an indispensable history of our times.”

DG Martin interviews Allan Gurganus - New Stories from the South In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Gurganus spotlights many of the stories from this year's volume that combines seasoned writers like Tony Earley, Wendell Berry, and George Singleton with gifted newcomers, including Keith Lee Morris, Erin Brooks Worley and J. D. Chapman. Their stories range from a communal love poem for a hunting dog, to a tale of a newly rich retiree trying to micromanage a Hollywood movie and losing...

DG Martin interviews Andrew Britton - The American In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Britton discusses his exciting debut, written at age 21 and crafted in the tradition of the masters—Ludlum, Forsyth, Clancy, Higgins, le Carre—but with a completely contemporary, post-9/11 sensibility. With his first novel published at age 24, this University of North Carolina graduate shares how he hopes to make his mark over the coming decades—shaping the future of contemporary thrillers.

Leah Stewart's The Myth of You and Me, the story of Cameron and Sonia's friendship—as intense as any love affair—and its dramatic demise, captures the universal sense of loss and nostalgia that often lingers after the end of an important relationship. In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch , the Chapel Hill author shares how her searingly honest new novel is a celebration and portrait of a friendship that will appeal to anyone who still feels the absence of that first true friend.

DG Martin interviews Tom Carlson - Hatteras Blues In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, author Tom Carlson shares how, in recording this truly North Carolina story, the author unexpectedly found himself becoming part of it. Struggling to come to terms with the illness and death of his wife to a degenerative disease, Carlson learns a lesson from the Fosters—and the townspeople—in how to prepare for absence and loss, and then how to grieve with some measure of grace and dignity.

DG Martin interviews Bill Smith - Seasoned in the South Seasoned in the South captures the flavors of the freshest seasonal foods and the spirit of one of the South's liveliest and most innovative kitchens. In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, Smith shares the traditional and classic Southern fare that has marked the seasoned chef's unique style throughout his culinary career.

DG Martin interviews William Leuchtenburg - The White House Looks South In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, author and master historian William E. Leuchtenburg combines the vivid biography and political insight of his engrossing study The White House Looks South to offer an engaging account of relations between these three presidents and the South, while also tracing how the region came to embrace a national perspective without losing its distinctive sense of place. The William Rand...

DG Martin interviews Dot Jackson - Refuge In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, author Dot Jackson discusses Mary Sen's great escape, along with its guilt and raptures, and in the process, the former prize-winning reporter at the Charlotte Observer shares her debut novel's story of hard-won redemption.