"[The] South blooms again in Augusta Trobaugh's River Jordan." -The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Sometimes a family grows from the most unlikely of friends. A lonely little girl living with a strict stepfather and mother. A woman just released from prison, seeking a job and a new purpose for her life. An aging matriarch with a sense of humor and a compassionate heart. Sit a spell by the gentle river of their merged lives. By the acclaimed author of Sophie and the Rising Sun (available in unabridged audiobook narrated by the late Rue McClanahan) and other Southern novels. Her next novel is Music From Beyond The Moon. Augusta Trobaugh has been nominated for Georgia Author of the Year, among many other honors.

Since the nineteenth century, the Ohio River has represented a great divide for African Americans. It provided a passage to freedom along the underground railroad, and during the industrial age, it was a boundary between the Jim Crow South and the urban North. The Ohio became known as the "River Jordan," symbolizing the path to the promised land. In the urban centers of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Evansville, blacks faced racial hostility from outside their immediate neighborhoods as well as class, color, and cultural fragmentation among themselves. Yet despite these pressures, African Americans were able to create vibrant new communities as former agricultural workers transformed themselves into a new urban working class. Unlike most studies of black urban life, Trotter's work considers several cities and compares their economic conditions, demographic makeup, and political and cultural conditions. Beginning with the arrival of the first blacks in the Ohio Valley, Trotter traces the development of African American urban centers through the civil rights movement and the developments of recent years.

As the site of several miracles in the Jewish and Christian traditions, the Jordan is one of the world’s holiest rivers. It is also the major political and symbolic border contested by Israelis and Palestinians. Combining biblical and folkloric studies with historical geography, Rachel Havrelock explores how the complex religious and mythological representations of the river have shaped the current conflict in the Middle East. Havrelock contends that the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from the nationalist myths of the Hebrew Bible, where the Jordan is defined as a border of the Promised Land. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim the Jordan as a necessary boundary of an indivisible homeland. Examining the Hebrew Bible alongside ancient and modern maps of the Jordan, Havrelock chronicles the evolution of Israel’s borders based on nationalist myths while uncovering additional myths that envision Israel as a bi-national state. These other myths, she proposes, provide roadmaps for future political configurations of the nation. Ambitious and masterful in its scope, River Jordan brings a fresh, provocative perspective to the ongoing struggle in this violence-riddled region.

Kaveri appears to be moving rather slowly in Thanjavur Thiruvayyar stretch. Can’t blame her because, who will be in a hurry to leave the place echoing the sublime melodious music ‘Jagadananda karaka’ in ‘natta raga’, and ‘Enthro Mahanubhavalu’, the fifth song of Pancharatna keerthana in ‘sri raga’?