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January 2002

Note: Prices listed below reflect the publisher's suggested list price. They are subject to change without notice.

The Peddler’s Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi

By Edward Cohen

Delta (Paperback, $12.95, ISBN: 0385335911)

Publication date: January 2002

Description from Booklist:

Cohen grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1950s and 1960s. In a city of 100,000 people, mostly Baptists, he was one of about 300 Jews. His immigrant grandparents settled there, coming from Romania, Russia, and Poland. Cohen remembers that the only Jewish institution in town was Temple Beth Israel, located next door to the state women’s club, which didn’t allow Jews, and down the street from his high school, which did allow Jews but not blacks. Farther north was the Jackson Country Club, which allowed neither. Cohen’s grandfather and great uncle founded a clothing store in Jackson, where his father worked all his life and where the author worked every Saturday for much of his childhood. Cohen describes how he left Mississippi for college (the University of Miami), where he met northern Jews and felt again like an outsider because of what he termed his southerness. This thoughtful and beautifully written memoir is a revelation about the allure of assimilation and the evasiveness of identity. —George Cohen

Majesty of the Mississippi Delta

By Jim Fraiser, photographs by West Freeman

Pelican (Hardcover, $18.95, ISBN: 1565548698)

Publication date: January 2002

Description:

Architectural/Historical stories about famous antebellum and turn of the century Delta landmarks, with color photography of exteriors and interiors, in Pelican’s “Majesty of” series.

Pompeii Man

By Paul Ruffin

Louisiana Literature Press (Hardcover, $26.95, ISBN: 0945083033)

Publication date: January 2002

Description:

Set on the Mississippi Coast and New Orleans, Pompeii Man is the story of the descent of an innocent couple into a hell of fear and violence, a world that neither of them could have imagined in the Big Easy. The reader watches in horror as Stafford loses his wife to a terrifying night of assault and rape in the dark heart of New Orleans, manages to get her back home, then loses her again, perhaps forever, except for the emergence of a detective who takes a personal interest in the case and driven by imagination and determination sets off to free her and bring down the drug lord who holds her captive.