“The Liberator’s Daughter” by Deborah J. Levine
Buck Buchanan
“First and Thirty” by Buck BuchananBack-to-back book signings at Barnes & Noble on Saturday, April 16, will showcase new works by two local authors.
* Deborah J. Levine will be featured at 2 p.m. with “The Liberator’s Daughter,” a historical memoir of her immigrant parents. Estelle and Aaron Levine met as students at Harvard, fell in love and married during World War II, she says. Her father enlisted in the U.S. Army and was soon deployed to France and Germany as a military intelligence officer dedicated to helping fellows Jews who had stayed in Europe. His letters home expressed the horrors he saw and the emotional scars they left.
The author says the book contains her father’s letters from World War II as well as stories of her own work that was inspired by his. Levine is editor-in-chief of the American Diversity Report, a creative resource for understanding cultural diversity. She earned a National Press Association Award for her book “Teaching Curious Christians About Judaism,” and her “Going Southern: The No-Mess Guide to Success in the South” was featured on C-SPAN.
* Buck Buchanan will wield the autograph pen at 4 p.m. for “First and Thirty: Social Upheaval in the 1970s’ South and the High School Football Game That Broke an Epic Losing Streak.” The book is a recollection of how the City High Dynamos, led by coach Bobby Davis, overcame adversity and racial unrest for an unforgettable football season that culminated in the defeat of their oldest rival, the Central High School Purple Pounders.
An alumnus of Chattanooga High School and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Buchanan now lives in California, where he is senior vice president of Parex USA’s North American headquarters. He says he felt compelled to write “First and Thirty” after a high school reunion in which his classmates reminisced about how their high school years differed from the average high school experience.