She Treads Softly: Don't Let This Get Out in Pinckard

Monday, May 11, 2026

Don't Let This Get Out in Pinckard

Don't Let This Get Out in Pinckard by Celeste King Conner
6/2/26; 194 pages
Koehler Books

Don't Let This Get Out in Pinckard by Celeste King Conner is a highly recommended collection of uplifting, humorous, and heartwarming essays, stories, and musings from a down-home Southern perspective right out of Dothan, Alabama.

The collected works were from her blog, newspaper column, and Facebook posts where she writes about her life experiences with candor, however ordinary, exceptional, or mundane, from a position of faith, family and home. While the essays can run the gamete from lighthearted family stories to serious issues, they are always presented with a positive attitude and often reference Bible verses. The majority of the pieces are positive. Each essay ends with a question, usually an optimistic thought question for readers to ponder and perhaps write down their answer.

For anyone who has lived in the same Southern town or area their whole life and always had family nearby, these may represent the compilation of positive anecdotes you've been seeking as they all stress counting your blessings. With the discuss of everyday life the stories are reminiscent of Erma Bombeck's writings, which is intentional because Celeste admired Bombeck.

As someone who is a little older than Celeste, has lived in numerous cities and states across the country, rarely near any family, and on whom the concept of "hometown" is lost, these down home Southern stories are very heartwarming, but not always relatable. Along the way, however, I have met several friends who will love and adore everything about Don't Let This Get Out in Pinckard.

Don’t Let This Get Out in Pinckard is a great choice for women who appreciate counting their blessings (while living in or near their Southern hometown). Thanks to Koehler Books for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.