As a follow-up to my recent article on Jesse Stuart’s family during World War II, I offer this article about two of Stuart’s books that were republished as Armed Services Editions during the war. Although Lieutenant Jesse Stuart never served overseas, two of his [...]
Eighty-three years ago, on December 7, 1941, Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor plunged America into a global conflict that had been underway for a little more than two years. Early the following year, Jesse Stuart, nearly 36 with a pregnant wife, tried to enlist [...]
In his 1956 autobiography, “The Year of My Rebirth,” Jesse Stuart makes brief mention of the mid-nineteenth century murder of “Nick” Nickapopolis, a pack peddler who worked W-Hollow on a monthly basis in the 1850s. Little is known of “Nick”—the people of W-Hollow did [...]
Best known for his nonfiction work “Night Comes to the Cumberlands,” Harry M. Caudill also wrote fiction, including “Dark Hills to Westward: The Saga of Jenny Wiley,” first published in 1969 and recently reprinted in a new softback edition by the Jesse Stuart Foundation.When Jenny [...]
The JSF has produced a new softback edition of Mongrel Mettle: The Autobiography of a Dog by Jesse Stuart. The book is more than just a dog story – with celebration of America’s melting pot democracy as a significant theme, it’s full of sparkling [...]
In the 1800s and early 1900s, waves of immigrants came to American cities to escape famine or persecution in their home countries. On New York’s Lower East Side, mostly Irish and Italians were packed into airless, crowded tenements or makeshift shelters, where they lived in [...]
Cynthia Rylant is an author of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry for children and young adults as well as an author and author/illustrator of picture books for children. Rylant is a prolific author who often bases her works on her childhood in the West Virginia [...]
With his past series of books set in Coalwood, West Virginia, New York Times best-selling author Homer Hickam won the praise of critics and the devotion of a huge national readership. His novel, Red Helmet, takes an inside look at coal mining, from shoveling [...]
Education was a calling for Jesse Stuart. In his books he portrays the teacher as a devoted nurturer, an advocate, and a liberator, rescuing children and their families from decline, illiteracy, social decay, or economic instability. “We educate our people or we perish,” he often [...]
In October of 1945, Janice Holt married Henry Giles in Louisville just after he returned from service in World War II. After four years in Louisville, she and Henry moved to a forty-acre farm on Giles Ridge, an area where they would live until [...]
