Advance Morning News
It's Sunday, June 1, 2025. Today, Books & Culture reviews award-winning fiction and a classic piece of historical writing, Drew has issues (what else is new?), and Clay Jones' is in Culpeper.
Support the Advance Today with a One-Time or Recurring Donation
Sunday Books & Culture - Novel
By Penny A Parrish
Amity Giage’s suspenseful, complex narrative “Heartwood.”
Read the full review
Sunday Books & Culture - Non-Fiction
By Martin Davis
Nativism, expansionist zeal, rapid urbanization, anti-immigrant fervor, heavenly-minded evangelicalism co-existing with stellar minds pushing the boundaries of American society, and a polarizing president who was either reviled or placed on par with the Almighty.
Read the full review
Edging Toward Dysfunction
By Drew Gallagher
I once took a creative writing class where the teacher broke the class up into small groups and each was tasked with starting a story and, after writing for five minutes, a buzzer would sound and the group would pass that story on to another group to continue writing.
Read the Column
The Donald Comes to Culpeper
By Clay Jones
We don’t cover Culpeper. Thank goodness Clay Jones does. Especially when convicted felons are looking after one another.
See the political cartoon
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”