Narrative Edge

• Winning the Earthquake by Lorissa Rinehart

  This episode explores Winning the Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress by historian Lorissa Rinehart. We trace Jeannette Rankin's path from a Montana ranch to Congress, her lonely votes against two world wars, and her decades of quiet work for peace on a small farm near Athens, Georgia. Along the way, you hear how this new biography brings to life a woman whose courage still speaks to your moment.

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• Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester

  In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya for a conversation about Dark Sisters, the new horror novel by Atlanta writer Kristi DeMeester. Set across the 1700s, the 1950s, and 2007 in and around Atlanta, the story follows women trapped in oppressive Christian communities and bound by a generational curse that causes their mouths to rot when they hide their true selves. You hear how DeMeester weaves folk horror, queer love, and questions of personal freedom into a Southern gothic that feels hauntingly close to home.

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• House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home by John T. Edge

  In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya for a deep dive into John T. Edge’s memoir House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home, a book that braids Southern food, family, and history into one candid narrative. Together, we explore how Edge, founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance and host of the TV series TrueSouth, uses dishes from turnip greens to catfish stew to examine race, class, and belonging across the modern South. If you love Southern food writing, cultural history, and memoirs that are honest without being self-indulgent, this conversation will give you plenty to chew on.

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• Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation by Zaakir Tameez

  Dive into Charles Sumner’s life and legacy, from his abolitionist roots in Boston to the “Crime Against Kansas” speech and the caning by Preston Brooks that galvanized the North. You hear how Sumner’s constitutional arguments shaped Republican thought, echoed in phrases like “freedom national, slavery sectional,” and how his ideas later surfaced in the Brown v. Board fight.

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• Hot Desk by Laura Dickerman

  On this episode, Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya unpack Hot Desk by Atlanta author Laura Dickerman, a witty romantic comedy set inside rival New York publishing houses. You hear how a contested literary estate, a notorious twentieth-century “lion,” and a secret family connection collide with texting, Zoom, and office politics to test what it means to separate art from the artist. Stay for how the book’s dual timelines and workplace satire shape Ben and Rebecca’s love story.

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