Exploring Books

Picture Perfect

By Mary Ann DeSantis Photography Credits: Author photo by @Beowulf Sheehan; Book cover provided by Minotaur Books/ St.Martin’s Publishing

A young woman creates a family she wants through photo manipulations in this debut novel by Mary Dixie Carter.

How do we know what’s real or what isn’t in a world of enhanced and fake photography? Do our favorite photographs really reflect our reality? Readers of “The Photographer” may ask themselves those same questions as they realize how easy it is for the book’s protagonist, Delta Dawn, to create the life she wants through photo editing programs. A children’s photographer in New York City, Delta creates imaginary scenes that fool her clients into believing their lives are perfect. But then she uses her talent to create more than just impeccable photos for clients — she finds sinister ways to insinuate herself into a family that represents perfection compared to her own troubled childhood. The new psychological thriller by Mary Dixie Carter is spellbinding, yet disturbing as the story unfolds. The book offers many layers — from Delta’s obsessive and unpredictable behavior to the Straub family’s powerful urge to have a baby through surrogacy. “I didn’t set out to write a psychological thriller. I just started writing and it became one,” says Carter, who had a brief stint as an actress before becoming a writer for publications like The New York Observer, TIME, and The Economist. “The book went in that direction because of my background as an actor. I’ve read many, many plays. The actor needs to escalate tension… and quickly. You need to get on with it. Find the conflict and escalate and that’s kind of in my bones,” she explains. Acting is also in Carter’s DNA. If her name rings a bell, it may be because her mother is the late Dixie Carter, a Tennessee native and actress who played Julia Sugarbaker on the sitcom “Designing Women” from 1986 to 1993. Carter’s own experiences with a very Southern name led her to pick the name, Delta Dawn, for her main character in “The Photographer.” “My mother took it personally if someone dropped the Dixie from Mary Dixie,” she says with a laugh. “I sometimes felt like a fish out of water growing up in New York and California. My name calls attention to itself. I wanted that for Delta, also, because Delta feels herself to be an outsider in the Brooklyn world. The lyrics in the Tanya

Tucker song also describe this character’s psyche.” The idea to make Delta a talented photographer stemmed from a real-life conversation with a photographer that Carter hired to take pictures of her own two young children. Although the photos were beautiful, her children’s eyes were cobalt blue in the pictures but they aren’t in real life. “I told her ‘I’d like for my children’s eyes to be their real color,’” Carter remembers. “And she said, ‘There is no real color.’ That psychology was fascinating to me. What I heard is there is no real color, no real anything — you make it what you want it to be.” The photographer adjusted the eye color and Carter came away with the plot for a story where the character created photos to represent life in the way she wanted it to be. While writing the book, Carter took a Photoshop class. “I can’t claim any expertise, but I wanted to understand it [Photoshop] well enough to get into Delta’s head and to sound convincing,” says Carter. Although she lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., Carter’s Tennessee roots run deep. She still owns and frequently visits her mother’s home in McLemoresville, Tenn., north of Memphis. “I am very connected to Tennessee. Going to the house in Tennessee is the nearest thing to my mother. She and my grandfather were both born there,” she says. “It gives them (my children) her essence. It’s a part of who I am and I want it to be part of their lives, too.” Her extended family — mostly cousins now — often gathers there and reminisces about their childhood summers spent with her grandparents. “We had so much fun and that’s still the case when we get together,” she recalls. “My grandfather had a store in Huntingdon, Tenn., and we had the run of the place. I remember playing in the huge basement of his store, H.L. Carter and Son.” Carter can still break into a song she recorded at eight years old for her grandfather. “One summer when my sister Ginna and I were there, we did a radio commercial for my grandfather’s store,” she recalls. “He drove us to the radio station and we sang. It was a fabulous moment to hear ourselves on the radio.” Her voice will soon be heard on the audio version of her debut novel. “They wouldn’t let me sing, but narrating the story was a happy experience of bringing my writing and my acting together,” she says. “The Photographer” has received rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and wellrespected critics. It’s predicted to become a summer reading blockbuster, and Carter has already sold the TV rights for the book. She has begun work on a second book although this summer she says she’ll be promoting “The Photographer” more than writing. “There are lots of things to do with promotion,” she says, “but when that dies down some, I’ll be able to put my nose to the grindstone.”

marydixiecarter.com

DeSoto Magazine Co-editor Mary Ann DeSantis knows a few Photoshop tricks but not enough to create a riveting novel — or an imaginary life.

Chris VanCleave, ‘The Redneck Rosarian'

The Romance of Roses

By Pamela A. Keene Photography Credits: Wedding roses: David Austin Wedding Roses. All other roses photos: Chris VanCleave

Alabama rose expert Chris VanCleave, known as ‘The Redneck Rosarian,’ encourages gardeners to branch out with new and exciting rose varieties.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” whispers Juliet from her balcony when thinking of her Romeo during the infamous conflict between the Capulets and Montagues. She’s comparing her lover in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to one of the most storied and flawless blossoms in nature. For centuries, roses have signified passion, romance, and beauty. From rose foliage found in fossils to the jeweled inlays in the Taj Mahal, roses have intertwined with history and culture.

However, the modern rose as we know it didn’t come into being until the late 1860s, when horticulturalists began breeding repeat-blooming single-stem blossoms that we now know as florist roses. “Perhaps the most familiar rose is the hybrid tea,” says Chris VanCleave, known as The Redneck Rosarian. “Those are the long-stemmed roses you see in bouquets and arrangements, particularly for weddings. They are the prima donnas of the garden.”

Brides often choose roses for bouquets because of their singular form and often sweet fragrance. However, hybrid tea roses are just the beginning of the types of roses you can grow in your landscape. Consider grandifloras, floribundas, climbers, drift roses, and the popular shrub roses, like Knockouts that are highly disease- and pestresistant.

For beginners, VanCleave suggests growing shrub roses because they are among the easiest of the rose species. “Basically, you can plant shrub roses, feed them several times each bloom season, deadhead them regularly, and

A Sampling of Modern Rose Types

Hybrid Tea – The grand dame of the garden with long stems and single blooms. Floribunda – Multiple bloom clusters of six to eight or more blossoms cover plants that grow both tall and wide. It’s the most easy-care class of modern roses. Grandiflora – A cross between hybrid teas and floribunda, the clusters of three to five showy blooms continue throughout the growing season. Climbing roses – Can be either floribunda or grandiflora with long arching branches for trellises, fences, and garden arbors.

be rewarded with multiple repeat flushes of blooms,” says the Birmingham resident. “These days, there are so many colors for shrub roses and Knockouts that you can get carried away with these alone in your garden. “But once a new gardener becomes comfortable with shrub roses, the door is open to try other types,” VanCleave says. “Starting out with something that’s easy will build your confidence to try other types of roses, such as grandiflora, floribunda, climbers or hybrid teas.” Roses can be purchased either potted in containers or sold as bare root. VanCleave is a proponent of buying bare root.

“The root system of a rose is its most important foundation and when you purchase bare root plants, you can carefully examine the roots’ health,” he says. “Look for main roots with little feeder roots growing off of them; they’re the capillaries of the roots that absorb the nutrients from the soil.” Most roses are sold bare-root in the late winter and early spring. Several growers are well-respected in the nursery business, including David Austin Roses, Jackson & Perkins, Weeks Roses, and Edmunds Roses. They sell both bare-root and roses in pots, depending on the time of year. VanCleave comes by his love of roses honestly. Growing up in the South, his first flower memories were of the rose corsages the women in his family wore each Mother’s Day to honor their own mothers. “They wore red roses if their mothers were still living and white if they had passed on.”

His own journey to becoming The Redneck Rosarian began when he purchased a home in Alabama. “There was one scraggly rose bush in the backyard, so I asked my mother who was paralyzed and in a nursing home how to revitalize it. She told me to give it a ‘judicious pruning, some coffee grounds, and some of that ‘miracle stuff’ — her name for Miracle Gro fertilizer,” he says. “The results were amazing. She passed away that spring, but I treasure all her gardening advice and nurturing.” These days, VanCleave gives his own rose-growing advice through podcasts, lectures, and talks with garden clubs across the nation. He has partnered with DeWit garden tool company to create a line of heirloom forged-steel gardening tools available through his website. VanCleave is also asked by rose hybridizers to do trials of new varieties, and he travels to home and garden shows across the country, sometimes appearing with fellow gardening specialist Brian Puckett of Helena, Ala. His website is rich with how-to information about rose selection, purchasing, planting, and caring for roses. At home, his yard is a rose-garden paradise, filled with hybrid teas, grandiflora and floribunda plants, as well as climbing shrub and drift varieties. Does he have a favorite rose? “That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child,” he says with a big smile. “Really, all of them, but if I had to pick, David Austin roses are my go-to. To single out specific roses, Veteran’s Honor hybrid tea is a muchhave in every rose garden. And for climbers, the Peggy Martin cultivar that survived Hurricane Katrina has such a wonderful back story. Part of every sale of Peggy Martin goes to garden restorations in New Orleans.”

redneckrosarian.com

Pamela A. Keene admits she’s addicted to roses. The Atlanta-based journalist currently grows about 60 hybrid tea varieties. And — don’t tell her husband — she ordered another four varieties while researching this article. Now, she has to find the space to plant them!