In this episode of Narrative Edge, you join hosts Peter Biello and Orlando Montoya to explore The Fight of His Life: Joe Louis’s Battle for Freedom During World War II by sports historians Johnny Smith of Georgia Tech and Randy Roberts. We trace how Joe Louis’s rise from boxing superstar to wartime goodwill ambassador collided with Jim Crow segregation, and how the postwar backlash against Black veterans helped push him toward more outspoken civil rights advocacy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Peter and Orlando talk with Georgia writer and longtime teacher Alan Caldwell to discuss his first poetry collection, The Only Verse. You hear Caldwell read “Running for No Reason” and we explore how his work faces depression, grief, marriage, and memory with clarity and care. We also trace his path from fiction to the Carrollton Just Poetry group and discuss how story and image power his poems.

This episode explores Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi, a sweeping historical novel that reframes the Persephone myth in a reimagined fifteenth-century West Africa. You’ll hear why Ododo, a young blacksmith from Timbuktu, is one of the podcast's most compelling protagonists and how palace intrigue, shifting loyalties, and questions of agency drive this story. Peter and Orlando talk setting, character, and the real history behind the fiction to help you decide if this book belongs on your list.