"An unpretentious, finely-crafted novel that will linger with the readers like the last strains of a favorite hymn. It is more enjoyable than a pitcher full of sweet tea and one of Mattie's home-cooked dinners."—The Atlanta Journal & ConstitutionShe had as much business keeping a stray dog as she had walking across Egypt—which not so incidentally is the title of her favorite hymn. She's Mattie Rigsbee, an independent, strong-minded senior citizen, who at 78, might be slowing down just a bit. When young, delinquent Wesley Benfield drops in on her life, he is even less likely a companion than the stray dog. But, of course, the dog never tasted her mouth-watering pound cake....Wise witty, down-home and real, Walking Across Egypt is a book for everyone.

Preston Clearwater has been a criminal since stealing two chain saws and 1600 pairs of aviator sunglasses from the Army during the Second World War. Back on the road in post-war North Carolina, a member of a car-theft ring, he picks up hitch-hiking Henry Dampier, an innocent nineteen-year-old Bible salesman. Clearwater immediately recognizes Henry as just the associate he needs—one who will believe Clearwater is working as an F.B.I. spy; one who will drive the cars Clearwater steals as Clearwater follows along in another car at a safe distance. Henry joyfully sees a chance to lead a dual life as Bible salesman and a G-man. During his hilarious and scary adventures we learn of Henry’s fundamentalist youth, an upbringing that doesn’t prepare him for his new life. As he falls in love and questions his religious training, Henry begins to see he’s being used—that the fun and games are over, that he is on his own in a way he never imagined.

The Copeland family of Listre, North Carolina, goes back a long way. Meredith Copeland's father, Albert, keeps a sort of written family record in some notebooks he bought to log the flights of his home-built floatplane, a project Albert first undertook in 1956, when his children were just kids. Now that the kids are grown — Thatcher has a son of his own, Meredith and Mark are back from Vietnam, and Noralee is off dating hippies — the notebooks are thick with the floatplane's failures to lift off and bulging with color Polaroids of the wisteria blossoms near the family plot, favorite family dogs, Thatcher and Bliss's wedding, records of Noralee's height and weight, a diagram of the graveyard, a newspaper story about wild-child Meredith's many backfired schemes. This novel travels back in time more than one hundred years, to the Copeland bride who first planted the wisteria by the back porch that would take over the surrounding woods, and then down to the present...

"This book is too good to keep to yourself. Read it aloud with someone you love, then send it to a friend. But be sure to keep a copy for yourself, because you'll want to read it again and again."— Elizabeth Forsythe HaileyRaney is a small-town Baptist. Charles is a liberal from Atlanta. And Raney is the story of their marriage. Charming, wise, funny, and truthful, it is a novel for everyone to love. "A real jewel."—Richmond Times-Dispatch