Reveille is pleased to welcome you to our 45^th year of summer book reviews! This year we look for inspiration in stories that stir us, that shore up our confidence and carry us through what feel like difficult times. Summer is the perfect time for recalling those prized memories of cherished moments in our lives that have shaped us, that keep us going and that add light and definition to our days. In this vein, Fritz Knapp gets us started with his first book The Book of Sport Virtues: Portraits from the Field of Play. In July we are lucky to be engaged by author Karen Spears Zacharias as she discusses her book, Where’s Your Jesus Now? Examining How Fear Erodes Our Faith. And check back for our August novel – sure to give you some fiction to read on the porch while you sip your sweet summer tea.

 

--The Reveille Library Committee

 Wednesday, June 24, first-time author Fritz Knapp brings to life the amazing and inspirational stories of some of the greatest athletes ever to grace the baseball diamond, the football grid iron, the tennis court, or the hockey rink. The players in these pages took the hard knocks that life threw at them and faced those adversities with determination (Susan Butcher), appreciation for life’s gifts (Lou Gehrig), and integrity (Arthur Ashe). Their athletic skills and talents made them good; the way they lived their lives made them great.

Fritz graduated from The College of William & Mary, where he co-captained the varsity lacrosse team to its best record in school history as a senior, and played in the illustrious North-South game. Since then, Fritz has taught and coached extensively in the Richmond area, and now teaches and coaches at Fork Union Military Academy. He has previously worked in the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia as the Director of a statewide mentoring initiative known as Virginia’s Future, and as a gang reduction specialist. His passion, working with at-risk students, led Fritz to found the Blue Sky Fund (www.blueskyfund.org), which has sent hundreds of City of Richmond students to summer camps since 2003. The father of three sons, ages 26, 25, and 22, Fritz has been married to his college sweetheart, Lee, an accomplished writer and artist, for 28 glorious years.

 

For more information visit http://www.sportvirtues.com.

Wednesday, July 22, Reveille welcomes talented author, Karen Spears Zacharias, to entertain and inspire us with a discussion of her second book, Where’s Your Jesus Now? Examining How Fear Erodes Our Faith. Karen was just 9 years old when her father was killed in Vietnam. In 2006 with her first book, After the Flag Has Been Folded, Karen shares her story beginning the day she learned of her father’s death and ending 30 years later as she traveled to the battlefield where he died. 

 

Karen is a former columnist and editorial writer for The Fayetteville Observer in Fayetteville, N.C. She served as adjunct professor of journalism at Central Washington University and as the 2008 author-in-resident for the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, Fairhope, Alabama. Karen Spears Zacharias was once bit by a big ol’ water moccasin in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamps. She survived, thanks to the prayers of Mrs. Josie Hays and a heaping dose of bleach scrub. Despite that frightful incident, Karen grew up to become a notable journalist/author, mesmerizing speaker, and a midnight-blogger. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

 

Her next book, Will Jesus Buy Me a Doublewide? ’cause I need more room for my plasma TV will be released by Zondervan in 2010.

 

Praise for Karen Spears Zacharias – “Karen Zacharias is the rarest, most valuable kind of speaker and writer. Not only does she transport her audience to the real-life scenes she describes through vivid storytelling, but she also explains the technical details of creating nonfiction work in a clear way, so that fellow writers can follow those blueprints and begin to achieve better results as essayists, memoirists, journalists, and other chroniclers of events and lives. Thanks to Karen's guidance, her audience is able to convey what happened and what it all means". --George Weinstein, Program Chairman of the Atlanta Writers Club

 

For more information about Karen visit her website at http://www.heromama.org/index.html