The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 145

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT: BOOKS The wide, wide world of Southern books Fannie Flagg goes down home again seemed to be looking over her shoulder, and Dena never knew what was behind them: "Her mother hod been so beautiful, but there was something about her that was far away, removed, and even as a small child it had frightened Dena. As a little girl, she used to crawl into her mother's lap and take her face and look into it, trying to see what was the matter. She would ask over and over. Her mother would look at her and smile and say, 'Nothing, but Dena knew zlip said. They hold up a marriage of 40 years as an example that the splintering of black families is not a given, that there can be a bond that remains intact Shirlee Haizlip said faith and trust are basic to the bond they built up in the early good times as the golden couple she from Wellesley, he from Harvard.

"We were melding together as a couple in those years, so by the time we had our first really bad times, we had a record of mutual support and empathy and interest," Shirlee Haizlip said. Even when they both lost jobs just a short time apart, their faith never wavered. "Our relationship has really been the refuge for any storm that I might encounter," Harold Haizlip said. With a book that documents those years, the Haizlips are finding a wider audience with whom to share their joy in each other and their hopes for fellow African-Americans as well as all Americans. "Our book tour is reaching across generations and racial lines.

We want to have 'book and boogie nights' with 30-something couples talk about the book first and then boogie. We may be two 60-year-olds, but we're not staid and boring." Shirlee and Harold Haizlip vM, speak at the Southern Festival of Books a.m. Saturday in the Old Supreme Court Room, WELCOME TO THE WORLD, BABY GIRL! By Fannie Flagg Random House, $25.95 Bv UNDA OUIGLEY You were expecting maybe Fried Green Tomatoes? That's not what you get with Fannie Flagg's new novel the one you've waited 11 years for. But it's unlikely you'll be disappointed, for Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is just as satisfying and down-home, just as complex and compelling as Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, the 1987 best-seller set in Flagg's native Alabama. In Welcome to the World, the main character, Dena Nordstrom, lives in New York City.

Her future as a television news anchor in the 1970s is bright, even though her personal life is marked by fear of intimacy, lack of commitment and alcohol abuse all the stereotypical yuppie traits in urban America. While she can plunge headlong into the future, and distance herself from the present, there's the not-so-small matter of her past. It happened, some of it anyway, in Elm-wood Springs, where she lived in early childhood with her widowed mother. Surrounded by people like her cousins Norma and Macky, sweet-smelling Aunt Elner and Neighbor Dorothy, a popular local radio show host, her first four years in that post-war, Middle America town were idyllic or that's what people tell her. Dena doesn't really remember, although a recurring dream with a merry-go-round seems to offer a trace of some happy time that is always just beyond her reach.

What Dena does remember although she can use work and strong drink to forget is the next decade, after she and her mother left Elm-wood Springs suddenly, then moved repeatedly, living in furnished apartments in anonymous residential hotels. Her mother always New York Times FICTION 1. RAINBOW SIX, by Tom Clancy. (Putnam, $27.95.) 2. THE LOOP, by Nicholas Evans.

(Delacorte, $25.95.) 3. TELL ME YOUR DREAMS, by Sidney Sheldon. (Morrow, $26.) 4. 1 KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE, by Wally BooksHarperCollins, $27.50.) 5. NO SAFE PLACE, by Richard North Patterson.

(Knopf, $25.95.) 6. MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, by Arthur Golden. (Knopf, $25.) 7. SUMMER SISTERS, by Judy Blume. (Delacorte, $21.95.) something was wrong." Where Flagg takes readers of Welcome to the World is on that journey with Dena, who wants to know then Fannie Flagg 33 to know, then does what really was the matter.

If there are demons to face, there may be no better place to face them than Elmwood Springs, which is, Flagg writes, "not perfect by any means but as far as little towns go it is about as near perfect as you can get without having to get downright sentimental about it or making up a bunch of lies." At every step along Dena's joumey, there are the slightly oddball but extraordinari ly wise characters that Flagg creates with great mastery and even greater affection. The plot they move in is poignant, and there is no shortage of tragedy, but "if you listen you will hear how everyone, even the chickens, who are the most nervous creatures on earth, sleep safe and sound through the night." Best Sellers 8. FIELD OF THIRTEEN, by Dick Francis. (Putnam, $24.95.) 9. MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, by Nicholas Sparks.

(Warner, $20.) 10. THE FIRST EAGLE, by Tony Hillerman. (HarperCollins, $25.) NON-FICTION 1. THE DEATH OF OUTRAGE, by William J. Bennett.

(Free Press, $20.) 2. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, by Mitch Albom. (Doubleday, $19.95.) 3. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, by Laura Schlesinger and Stewart Vc-gel. (Cliff StreetHarperCollins, $24.) 4.

THE DAY DIANA DIED, by who dropped out of the sky like fish in a hurricane and became Negroes. We have been left out of society and dehumanized, yet we have a history, a language and a culture." The moaner's bench is, symbolically, a way to narrow the gap. "You have to admit that slavery was a sin, one of the biggest sins that has been committed against man on this planet." Then redemption and peace can come, he said. "We must face each other honestly and thrash out our differences and try to deal with them. Otherwise we drift farther and farther apart." Mars HiRwiRbe on on the Discover Great New Writers panel at the South-em Festival of Books p.m Saturday, Room 18, Legislative Plaza, ABRAHAM VERGHESE When Abraham Verghese arrived in Johnson City, in 1985 to practice medicine, he found himself unexpectedly dealing with patients infected with HIV and AIDS.

The hometown which the young men had left behind, then returned to to die, had to learn about acceptance, and so did Verghese. His journey to open his heart, as a man and as a physician, was documented in 1994 in My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, one of Time magazine's best books of the year. Verghese's personal growth, the strength that allows him to walk to the very edge of human tragedy and not turn away, continues in The Tennis Partner (HarperCollins, $25). "I didn't want to keep mining my life for stories," Verghese said. But because "men are notoriously reticent about their deepest friendships, and even when they speak of them, they refer to them in sporting terms, like 'my fishing he decided he had to try.

Verghese's "tennis partner" was David Smith, who came to America from Australia on a tennis scholarship and played briefly on the pro tour before choosing to study medicine. "Tennis is such a beautiful metaphor for friendship," he said in an interview from his office at Texas Tech University, where he is a professor of medicine. "It's a cooperative sport, and you can't play without someone being on the other side of the net." But Smith was a cocaine addict, and Verghese found that even the game they both loved could not stop Smith's downward spiral. Addiction is a disease of loneliness and of secrecy," he said. "If AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) work, it is precisely because they allow people to repopulate their world and divulge their secrets." While Smith was repeatedly recovering, then relapsing, he remained a friend to Verghese, who had his own struggles.

Verghese's marriage was disintegrating, and "during my lowest point of my life, I was able to survive precisely because David, among others, was there for me. It was his hand that lifted me. "The fact that I could not do the same for him consistently was what I thought really defined this disease "Ultimately David was responsible for David." He died of suicide, part of a statistic that claims 200 physicians in America every year. Now that The Tennis Partner is a reality, Verghese considers how his friend would have felt about it. "I think of those moments when he was most truly in recovery, and there was a quality to him that was so spiritual.

In that spirit, I think he would have felt great remorse about his suicide and its after-effects," Verghese said. "In the spirit of openness, I think he would have wanted the story told." Verghese will speak at the Southern Festival of Books 2-3 p.m. Friday in the House Chambers. Hogan Trochek, author of Midnight Clear and Every Crooked Nanny; and Jack Bass, editor of the 14-part television series, The American South Comes of Age, and, most recently, author of a biography of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond.

"We always strive for diversity, but I think we have really, really achieved it this year," said Robert Cheatham, executive director of the Tennessee Humanities Council, pointing to authors representing racial and ethnic groups, and expertise in such fields such as music, culture, politics and history as well as literature. SUSAN CHOI When Susan Choi's father traveled from his native Korea to Sewa-nee, there was no time for transition. "One day he was in Seoul, and one day he was in Sewanee," Choi said. The stories he told her shaped The Foreign Student (HarperCollins, $23), one of the year's most talked-about debut novels. Set in wartime Korea and the American South of the 1950s, The Foreign Student brings together Chang Ahn Chuck when he gets to America and Katherine Monroe, a Southern belle but still an outsider in Sewanee.

Their friendship grows, with both examining events from which they sought refuge in Sewanee. "Katherine sprang from an anecdote of my father's about a woman he met once who made an impression on him," Choi said. Beyond that, Choi had to depend on her imagination: "He wasnt even sure what her name was. I was intrigued." That intrigue propelled the novel, which she wrote while working full-time as a fact-checker at The New Yorker. When she took a few months off to finish the "raw first draft," she stayed with a friend in Williamson County.

She was last in Sewanee 10 years ago, and she didn't return until her last day in Tennessee. "I think I was afraid that if I went earlier, I would say, 'Oh, no, I've written this all and I'd sabotage it," she said. "But actually, I walked around Sewanee and said, 'You know, I think I got it Susan Choi vM be part of the Discover Great New Writers panel at the Southern Festival of Books p.m. Saturday, Room 18, Legislative Plaza. SHIRLEE AND HAROLD HAIZLIP Shirlee and Harold Haizlip were children of privilege, but that did not spare them the effects of racism.

"We can't speak for all black people, but for us as a couple and for many of our friends, one of the cumulative effects of racism is sorrow and another is sublimated rage," Shirlee Haizlip said. "There is always that boiling point you try to keep a lid on, and there is caution, but there is always hope." The couple's book, In The Garden of Our Dreams (Kodansha, $24), subtitled "Memoirs of a Marriage," is a love story, but it also documents four decades of the larger struggle of their generation to achieve racial equality. Harold Haizlip, the Western Regional Director of Communities in Schools said "racism has limited the perception of potential for young people of color, and they feel that however good they may be or however high they aspire, they have limits related to the accidents of their births." What Harold and Shirlee Haizlip want to show their two daughters and other young people is "that there are myriad problems associated with ethnicity, but they can be solved. They are wrenching, but they can foster growth," Harold Hai Getting there Fannie Flagg, best-selling author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, will read from and sign copies of her new novel, Welcome to the World, Baby at 7 p.m. Thursday at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 4007 Hillsboro Road.

It is from these people, who and the yearly Dixie Cahill dance and twirl recital, that Dena learns about decency and love and family and doing the right thing and, eventually, her past: "She began to feel like she did after she had been to the dentist and the Novocain started to wear off: it was painful, but a bittersweet pain. Slowly -she was beginning to feel like the girl she used to be, the one that had lost along the way." And that girl, maybe, just maybe, could go home again. Linda Quigley is a feature writer for 1 The Tennessean. Christopher Andersen. (Morrow, $27.) 5.

HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, by Ann H. Coulter. (Regn-ery, $24.95.) 6. HIS BRIGHT LIGHT, by Danielle Steel. (Delacorte, $25.) 7.

A WALK IN THE WOODS, by Bill Bryson. (Broadway, $25.) 8. A PIRATE LOOKS AT FIFTY, by Jimmy Buffett. (Random House, $24.95.) 9. ANGELA'S ASHES, by Frank McCourt.

(Scribner, $24.) 10. CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD: Book 1, by Neale Donald Walsch. (Putnam, $19.95.) jKi. ii- jJ.vjV-., 1 mknhWA HkflMY DcvLscllcrs, Lore: The TtNNESSEAN A nam fiiM 'mjrvmj if Mi 3 Sn ike Garden of Gur DREAMS MARS HILL Mars Hill, a retired engineer living in Albany, N.Y., is a long way from Depression-era Arkansas, the son of a black storekeeper. But it is the images of those years that Hill, now 75, recalled vividly over the last decade as he wrote and rewrote an autobiographical novel, The Moaner's Bench (HarperCollins, $24).

The central image is the straight-backed oak bench in Baptist churches of the early part of the century where those who admitted sin went to sit, moan and ask for forgiveness. "Once that is done, a redemption doesn't come by you saying that you repent," Hill said. "It comes as a process of living according to what you repented for the rest of your life." It wasn't easy, Hill relates in his book. Sun Hughes, the fictional depiction of the young Mars Hill, struggles with his worldly needs and desires, thwarted by religion and his strict and pious Uncle Pet, with whom he lived after his father died. Hill uses the moaner's bench of his childhood as a metaphor for life in America, the struggle for racial equality and the struggle to be human.

"The people who are opposed to putting money into schools so minorities can get an education, opposed to lending money to minorities so they can do business and get into the mainstream of the economy those are the same people who enslaved our ancestors," Hill said. But blacks "are not somebody Road. Joan Jacobs Brumburg, author of The Body Project An Intimate History of American Girls and Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa will be the guest speaker at the second annual CASA Family Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Thursday at Montgomery Bell Academy. Tickets are $10 at the door; books will be available for purchase and Brumburg will sign copies of her books at 6:30 p.m.

and after her talk, at 8:30 p.m. Steven Womack, author of Murder Manual, and Elizabeth Hayes, winner of The Tennessean's Summer Fiction Contest, will speak at "Hats Off! to Nashville Writers," a program to be held at the Richland Park Branch Library from 4-7 p.m. Thursday. The library is located at 4711 Charlotte Ave. The New Friends Book Store will be open from 10 am to 3 p.m.

Saturday at the Howard School Building, 700 Second Avenue S. The store, whicrj offers used hardbacks for $1 rim vi Clyde Edgerton brings 'Trouble' to MTSU and paperbacks for 50 cents, is a pro ject of the Friends of the Public Library. ON THE AIR James Chace, author of Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, will discuss his book at noon today on Book TV on C-SPAN2. The interview will air again at 6 p.m. and midnight today.

George Bush and Brent Scow-croft will discuss their book A World Transformed at 8 p.m. today on C-SPAN's Booknotes. Laura Van Wormer will discuss her book Talk with John Seigenthaler on A Word on Words at 7 p.m. Tuesday on WDCN-Channel 8. The program airs again at 10:30 a.m.

Oct 11.fi To list a book-related event in Footnotes, send information by mail to Sue McClure, The Tennessean, 1100 Broadway, Nashville 37203; by fax, 259-8057; or e-mail, living Items must be received by noon Monday to be included the following Sunday. Bv SUE McCLURE Book editor Clyde Edgerton, one of the South's most popular writers, will take center stage Thursday tor this year's Writers in the Round program at Middle Tennessee State University. Edgerton, author of seven novels, will read from his latest book Where Trouble Sleeps, a New York Times Notable Book. Joining him will be Greil Marcus, whose most recent book is Invisible Republic Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, and singer-songwriter Steve Young. The symposium, an annual program of Tom 7.

Hall Endowment in Mass Communication, will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Room S1 28 of the Business and Aerospace Building. The program and reception that follows are free and open to the public. Guy Gilchrist will sign copies of his books Night Lights and Pillow Fights at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 4007 Hillsboro TPAC's Polk Theater Tv' i TJV.C Tox Dcwr.

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