Reviews - Carolyn Curry

Carolyn Curry

Reviews & Awards

Sudden Death Reviews

Immerse yourself in the world of football

When it comes to the triumph and tragedies of being the wife of a football coach, no one has lived it more than Dr. Carolyn Curry. In Sudden Death, she takes us inside the sometimes-glamorous, sometimes-ruthless world of college football as seen through the eyes of Duke and Kendall Astin. He was a handsome football player from Hawaii. She was a well-educated, independent woman from Atlanta who wanted to go to law school. They fell in love at UCLA and away we go. This isn’t a men’s book. It isn’t a women’s book. It is a tightly written page-turner that deals with important themes and keeps us hooked until the very end. Well done, Dr. Curry!

Sudden Death, Carolyn Curry’s debut novel, has something for all readers. Her characters walk off the page in this intriguing read. Doesn’t get much better than Saturday afternoon college football. This story is much more than a mystery, but it has plenty of riddles to solve. Curry’s passion for women’s rights shines through in this story of Kendall, a wife of a university football coach. The author pulls you in for the ride of your life. Hold on!

With a gripping first novel, Carolyn Curry has probed a possibility of American life both unthinkable and plausible: a mass intersection of football, passion, and violence. She has forged an enthralling plot that doubles as a reflection about the terrain into which she has ventured. This is a bold, imaginative turn of work.

Kendall Astin is a dedicated women’s rights activist married to the love of her life, legendary football coach Duke Astin. When Duke’s career takes them to the deep South, where football is more religion than sport, their very existence is thrown into turmoil. Suddenly the battle on the field becomes metaphor for the battle of good vs. evil, resulting in tragedy and heartbreak. Carolyn Curry, the wife of a former football coach, tells a story she knows only too well, a story about much more than football. Sudden Death is a stunning debut novel of love, sports, and obsession, which kept me riveted to the very end, turning pages as fast as I could. This one is not to be missed!

Available at your favorite independent bookstore

Suffer and Grow Strong

The Life of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1834–1907

Suffer and Grow Strong is a remarkable biography by Carolyn Curry that is destined to become a classic in women’s studies. It tells the story of the redoubtable Ella Gertrude Thomas, who kept a vivid record of her life for forty-one years. Her courage and resilience during and after the Civil War are reminiscent of Scarlett O’Hara. History has been a great silencer of women, but Suffer and Grow Strong tells the tale of a white Southern woman who endures the whirlwind of the war and the deprivations of Reconstruction, then fought hard enough for women’s rights that my grandmother was eligible to cast her first vote in 1920. This book is a great achievement for Carolyn Curry.

Suffer and Grow Strong is a fascinating story of a remarkable Southern woman. Carolyn Curry ably brings Gertrude Thomas to life through extensive research and explores Thomas’s steel-willed determination to triumph over wartime dislocations and postwar deprivation, her spirited intellect and devotion to her family, and her passionate support of women’s right—important and elegantly written contribution to Southern women’s history.

Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas’s journals have long been an indispensable source for anyone seeking to understand the nineteenth-century South and Southern white women’s experiences. Yet surprisingly, Thomas has never been the subject of a full-length biography. Carolyn Curry’s welcome new book carefully documents Thomas’s life story and puts her journals into an intriguingly fresh context.

As enjoyable as it is educational, Carolyn Curry’s Suffer and Grow Strong utilizes journals and contemporary newspapers to vividly recreate the life of one of Georgia’s earliest “feminists.” In doing so, she teaches us about a more domestic Civil War, viewed through the experiences of the women left behind.

In her role as unlikely feminist and a leader of the suffrage movement, Ella Gertrude Thomas could be the fictional heroine of a rip-roaring historical novel. Instead, Carolyn Curry brings to life a real woman whose courage and endurance is truly inspirational.

Carolyn Curry’s Suffer and Grow Strong is a masterfully researched and written story of a remarkable woman, whose journals recorded soul and spirit and engaging insight into the exploding of history that both illuminated and scarred nineteenth-century American. Carolyn Curry has captured the quintessence of both character and period, and the result is a mesmerizing reading experience.