That Pinson Girl Is One!

THAT PINSON GIRL turns ONE today! What a fun year it’s been. To every one of you who has bought and read the book, shown up for an event, or generally been a cheerleader for the novel — Thank you!

How to mark the milestone? A PLAYLIST! Here is music that (for me, at least) suggests the physical and emotional landscape and the characters in TPG.

It’s easy enough to imagine Leona Pinson listening to Sophie Tucker’s “Some of These Days” or Marion Harris’s “After You’ve Gone.” But I also had fun broadening the mix: the recording artists range from the WWI era to recent north-Mississippi blues to Alice Cooper’s rock version of “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” (for Leona’s Aunt Sally, maybe?) to the melancholy sounds of some favorite classical music. Imagine Leona’s mother, Rose, humming “Amazing Grace,” or the sharecropper Luther Biggs singing something like “Dark Was the Night” while he works. For Leona’s lover, Walker Broom, who has gone off to fight in France, there’s “Over There,” “I’m a Poor Boy, Long Way from Home,” and “I’m Sorry I Made You Cry.” And for Leona’s troubled brother, Raymond, how about “Mean Old World”? I included Prehistoric Bird’s “XI” because PB’s haunting acoustic guitar takes me where I need to go.

If you’ve read THAT PINSON GIRL, give the playlist a spin and see which characters the music draws you back to. If you haven’t yet read the novel, I hope you’ll get your copy today. It’s available through Amazon, Bookshop.org, and indie bookstores everywhere!

Here’s the That Pinson Girl playlist on Spotify. Enjoy!