Virginia book notes

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are rightly known as two of the most gifted authors of their generation -- and two of the most different. Fitzgerald's prose was more elegant; Hemingway's was tougher. But their careers and their lives moved along parallel lines.

Scott Donaldson, the Louise G.T. Cooley Professor of English at the College of William and Mary, explores the two writers through a series of essays in Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days (494 pages, Columbia University Press, $32.50).

Such a work might fall prey to the obscurities of academia, but Donaldson makes the concept work for the more casual reader. And though the book can be taken as a whole, it's easy to simply dip into from time to time, as Donaldson explores not only the authors' differences but also their affinities.

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It's a long psychic way from Brooklyn to Blacksburg, but one that seems to enhance talent for novelist Edward Falco, who directs the master's of fine arts program in creative writing at Virginia Tech.

And creativity abounds in Saint John of the Five Boroughs (432 pages, Unbridled Books, $26.95), a novel that focuses on Avery Walker, a senior at Penn State who leaves school to live with Grant Danko, a performance artist 15 years her senior, in Brooklyn.

With sensitivity and passion, Falco dissects the effects of violence, both personal and cultural, on his characters' lives and does so in a novel that transcends the suspense genre.

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Among the loveliest spots in Virginia, which is blessed with so many, is the village of Greenwood in western Albemarle County.

Mark Steven Rhoads, a retired pharmaceutical executive who lives on the north side of Turk's Mountain near Greenwood, explores his voyage of self-discovery in prose, poems and photos in The Songbird in My Heart: The Magnificence of Being (206 pages, Belle Vista Publishing, $24.99).

"When I take a walk in the woods," Rhoads writes, "I see a perfect world of beauty and balance, a world that doesn't need a written plan, a politician, or an administrator."

When he's not contemplating and writing, Rhoads sells firewood and 10 types of birdhouses.

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Deb Olin Unferth has won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, which honors the best debut novel published in 2008.

Her winning book is "Vacation," a tale of a contemporary businessman whose life takes a mysterious, heartbreaking turn. Unferth will receive the award at the First Novelist Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University on Nov. 6.

Unferth was one of three finalists for the prize, which is now in its eighth year. The other finalists were David Mura for "Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire" and Jesmyn Ward for "Where the Line Bleeds."

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Richmond native and Douglas Freeman High School alumnus John Lawson is one of three people whom St. Andrews Presbyterian College have honored with the Ethel N. Fortner Writer and Community Awards.

Lawson began writing poetry and songs as a teenager. He graduated from St. Andrews with a bachelor of arts degree in English in 1971. He completed his master of arts degree in English at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1986 and his doctorate in English at Northern Illinois University in 1996.

Lawson taught creative writing at St. Andrews between 1996 and 1998 and currently teaches at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. He was founding coordinator of Robert Morris's Communications and has served in a wide variety of print and online venues. St. Andrews College Press published his first collection of poetry, "Generations," in 2007. -- Jay Strafford