Desperate Ransom
Setting Her Family Free
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Thomas Nelson
- Published: 2012
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Publisher's Description
"Time changes nothing, girl, but the size of your underwear...and hopefully your hairdo." Minton Sparks unique brand of performance art has brought the rural South to life for the many fans who flock to her shows and relive them through her audio releases. Now, the Grammy-nominated artist has committed some of her most popular poems and stories to print. The thirty pieces collected here veer from heartbreak to hilarity and back again, as Sparks shares her memories of growing up in small-town Tennessee. This unusual family may not walk the straight and narrow, but they're guaranteed to walk straight into your heart and mind, and linger. Like an old-time preacher, Sparks draws her audience in with compelling storytelling while leaving them with something essential to ponder. Desperate Ransom takes readers on a journey into the heart of an extraordinary family, demonstrating once again that Sparks is a ground-breaking artist--and a true American treasure.
Endorsements (4)
“PRAISE FOR MINTON SPARKS’ WORKS Sparks can render her South with bull’s eye diction and down-home wit, but she also brings a clear eye to her own place in somebody else’s story. Sparks knows the South’s many undersides and voices.”
“With authentic voice and vivid image, Minton Sparks renders past, place, family, and community as sharply as an Exacto Knife. “I’ll give you reality,” the narrator claims in prelude to Ambulance Chasers. And in Desperate Ransom each character and each story comes from a place so real and sentient, you will wish it was your own history to remember. Each poem feels like the hard, tight, potent seed of a novel. Minton is a force of nature!”
“Sparks talks like Lucinda Williams sings; low, bed-headed and husky with sin, either remembered or imagined. In the syncopated monologues on her new spoken-word album, THIS DRESS, your gas-pumping mama, your fellow Baptists and your unmentionable relatives occupy every slot on the Waffle House jukebox, and when musical guests like Keb’Mos’ and Maura O’Connell chime in, you can even dance to ‘em.”
“The Nashville poet and storyteller unearthed another set of wondrous vignettes that once again drew an unforgettable picture of life in the South. Sparks has a unique niche that soulfully marries the Southern storytelling tradition with the strains of old-time music for a hybrid that is all her own.”
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