Book chosen for Hall reading program

GAINESVILLE - A book by Philip Lee Williams has been selected for this year's Hall Reads Together program.

The book is "A Distant Flame"- and the dates for the event are Nov. 4-6.

This is the second year for Hall Reads Together, a "One Book One Community" event, designed to promote reading as a "fun and meaningful part of life," and to promote Hall County as a literate community.

Hall Reads Together strives to bring together business and education related interests to serve a common goal: to unite the community around one unique event and to create a dialogue about important issues that will build bridges of understanding among people of diverse ages, social, economic, and racial backgrounds.

Williams is an award-winning novelist who has spent his entire life in Georgia. He is the author of nine novels, two memoirs, and a children's book. Also a widely published poet, he founded and edited the poetry journal Ataraxia.

A Distant Flame (2004) is a historical novel, A Distant Flame (2004). Told from the perspective of a Confederate sharpshooter, the novel chronicles the Union assault on Atlanta near the end of the Civil War. Alternating chapters reveal the sharpshooter, fifty years later, struggling to prepare a speech about his experiences for his hometown's commemoration of the Atlanta campaign.

Hall Reads Together seeks to put the book in the hands of as many Hall countians as possible, getting them to read it as a "community" between Nov. 4-6.

Last year, the book chosen for the program was Terry Kay's The Valley of Light, a novel by another Georgia author and one set in northeast Georgia.