Wednesday, June 23, Reveille welcomes debut novelist Diann Ducharme for a look at her book, The Outer Banks House. Already garnering significant praise prior to its June 8, 2010 release date, The Outer Banks House recounts a dramatic story of love, loss, and coming of age at a singular and rapidly changing time in one of America’s most beautiful and storied communities. As the wounds of the Civil War are just beginning to heal, one fateful summer would forever alter the course of a young girl’s life.

In 1868, on the barren shores of post-war Outer Banks North Carolina, the once wealthy Sinclair family moves for the summer to one of the first cottages on the ocean side of the resort village of Nags Head. Seventeen-year-old Abigail is beautiful, book-smart, but sheltered by her plantation life and hemmed-in by her emotionally distant family. To make good use of time, she is encouraged by her family to teach her father’s fishing guide, the good-natured but penniless Benjamin Whimble, how to read and write. And in a twist of fate unforeseen by anyone around them, there on the porch of the cottage, the two come to love each other deeply, and to understand each other in a way that no one else does.

But when, against everything he claims to represent, Ben becomes entangled in Abby's father's Ku Klux Klan work, the terrible tragedy and surprising revelations that one hot Outer Banks night brings forth threaten to tear them apart forever.

Diann was born in Indiana in 1971, but she spent the majority of her childhood in Newport News, Virginia. She majored in English literature at the University of Virginia, but she never wrote creatively until, after the birth of her second child in 2003, she sat down to write The Outer Banks House Diann has vacationed on the Outer Banks since the age of three. She even married her husband of 10 years, Sean Ducharme, in Duck, North Carolina, immediately after a stubborn Hurricane Bonnie churned through the Outer Banks. Conveniently, the family beach house in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina provided shelter while she conducted research for the historical fiction novel. She has two beach-loving children and a border collie named Toby, who enjoys his sprints along the shore. The family lives in Manakin-Sabot, Virginia counting down the days until summer.

Take a closer look online at http://www.diannducharme.com

Praise for The Outer Banks House

Stephanie Cowell — Author of CLAUDE & CAMILLE

Karen Harper — Author of THE QUEEN'S GOVERNESS

Wednesday, July 21 (please note that this is third Wednesday of the month), Reveille is very pleased and honored to welcomes New York Times bestselling author Steven V. Roberts for discussion of his most recent book, From Every End of This Earth. In this fascinating work Steve follows the stories of thirteen immigrant families for a poignant, eye-opening look at immigration in America today. America is a nation of immigrants, but what does it mean to be an immigrant in the United States today? In some ways, the experience has never changed—all newcomers feel the pain of separation. In other ways, it has changed drastically—families maintain strong business ties to their home countries and speak daily with their relatives on cell phones.

Attitudes about the great melting pot have taken a sharp turn toward insularity in recent years. The 9/11 attacks and recent waves of undocumented workers seem to have eroded America's long-standing belief in the value of immigration. Yet the families in this book conclusively demonstrate that critics are wrong, and that in the age of Barack Obama, the son of an immigrant from Kenya, newcomers "from every end of this earth" continue to renew America's greatness, every day, with their courage and character.

Wednesday, August 18 (please note this is the 3rd Wednesday of the month) Reveille will be blessed with the inspiring Phyllis Theroux as she invites us for a walk through her newly-published book, The Journal Keeper. Essayist Phyllis Theroux has long captivated readers with her pitch-perfect rendering of the inner lives of American women. Now she has written The Journal Keeper a memoir of six years in her anything but uneventful life.
 

Theroux is a natural story teller. She slips her arm companionably into yours, like an old friend going for a stroll. But her stride is long, her eye sharp, and she swings easily between subjects that occupy most people who are mid-way through their lives: love, loneliness, children, growing old, financial worries, spiritual growth, and – in Theroux’s case – watching her remarkable mother prepare for death.

 

Thirty years ago, Theroux began to keep a journal when she was in the middle of a painful divorce and in deep distress. Over time, it evolved into something quite different – a kind of daily “light box” that she uses to illuminate her path. But not until Theroux sat down to edit her journals for publication did she realize, in her words, “that a hand much larger and more knowing than my own was guiding my life and pen across the page.” She makes a good case for this being true for us all.

Phyllis Theroux is an essayist, columnist, teacher and author. Born in San Francisco, California, she is the critically acclaimed author of California and Other States of Grace, a memoir, two collections of essays, Peripheral Visions and Nightlights: Bedtime Stories for Parents in the Dark and an anthology, The Book of Eulogies. Her first children’s book, Serefina Under the Circumstances, was published by Greenwillow Press. In 2002 a novella, Giovanni’s Light, was published at Christmas. Her newest book, The Journal Keeper: A Memoir, was published by Grove Atlantic in March 2010.

 

A contributing essayist on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer from 1992 – 1996, her columns, op-ed pieces, reviews and feature stories have appeared in various newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The International Herald Tribune. In the 1970’s she was a frequent contributor to the “Hers” column in The New York Times. In the l980’s, she was a monthly columnist for Parents Magazine. In the l990’s she wrote a monthly column for House Beautiful. Her essays continue to be anthologized in numerous collections.
 

Following the publication of The Book of Eulogies in 1997 she created “The Great American Portraits Program” which was sponsored by the Library of Congress and toured various cities in the United States. She has been a guest professor and lecturer at numerous forums, colleges and universities.

 

The founder of Nightwriters, which conducts writing and creativity seminars in the United States and abroad, she occasionally conducts one-on-one editorial seminars with individual writers who come to spend time working in her writer’s cottage in Ashland, Virginia.

 

As a community activist and educator, in 1989, she formed a non-profit organization (“Winners in Grade School”) to attract grants and support an inner-city Washington, D. C. elementary school where she taught creative writing to fifth graders between 1989 – 1993. During that time she created a consortium of private schools to be partners in education with the school.
 

A graduate of Manhattanville College, with a B.A. in Philosophy, she lives with her husband Ragan Phillips in Ashland, Virginia.

Marie Brenner — Best-selling author of Apples and Oranges