Tennessee River Cafe: A Short Story Collection

Tennessee River Cafe: A Short Story Collection

Tennessee River Cafe is a collection of interrelated short stories where you will find a delectable menu of unforgettable characters and the close-knit world they inhabit. Set in a small rural community clustered on the bluffs overlooking the Tennessee River, these stories hark back to Southern life of the late 1940's. The Tennessee River Cafe, where Miss Edna and Miss Sally, two maiden sisters, have been serving up breakfast and lunch for the past thirty-five years, is the touchstone of the stories and a common denominator for a widely diverse social order. The stories unfold in sequence, revealing the cast of characters, much as chapters in a novel, as they move in and out of the town landmarks—the cafe and bank, the hotel, grocery store, sheriff’s office, lawyer’s office—in this established and static community. But outside this constricted and public sphere, where one is always on display, exists a personal and sometimes secret world. Eccentric characters, a revival, coon hunt, trot lines, a midnight encounter with a barge, along with murder, a drunk rattler, and the death of a stranger—all are here in this quiet little town, in southern Tuscomby County, known as River Bluff, Tennessee. Beth Curtis was born and raised in Tennessee, where her family were among the first settlers. As she was growing up, it was not unusual for several generations of family to sit around the dinner table or on the front porch passing along stories of the past. As she listened to these old stories, she began to know and understand not only her family heritage, but the culture and traditions of her beloved state of Tennessee, and the part her family and families like hers took in shaping its history.