Smoke and Silence:
The Lives of Ol’ Mort
Smoke and Silence: The Lives of Ol’ Mort is a folk epic memoir built from memory, myth, and the stories passed down across generations in eastern Kentucky. Told in the voice of Mort’s great-great-grandson and rooted in tales shared by Mort’s grandson, this is the story of a man who lived hard and loved quietly—who survived a world war, outran federal agents, raised his family from the land, and became something larger than life.
God’s Oddling:
The title of this book, God’s Oddling, comes from something my father used to call me. For years he called me “oddling” because I had gone away to college and become a writer, and because I didn’t smoke the tobacco we grew or drink the mountain liquor brewed nearby. I was recovering from my heart attack when my father died. During those last days he often visited me at my house, and he still called me “oddling.” … —Jesse Stuart, Greenup, 1960
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Allan Eckert’s Winning of America Series
This Jesse Stuart Foundation best-selling series details accounts of frontiersmen and Native Americans and many dramatic events of the time period. Many years of research went into this popular series that also tells the story of wilderness America itself, its penetration and settlement.
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Jesse Stuart Junior Books
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Latest JSF News
32 Votes Before Breakfast
In these twenty tales about rural politics in Appalachia, collected in his book “32 Votes Before Breakfast,” Jesse Stuart reminds us that there’s nothing new about political conflict and intrigue.One of these stories follows Mose Winthrop, the Kentucky moonshiner who charters a bus to take a group of his best customers on a trip to Chicago to cheer their Wildcats to victory. Influenced by partaking liberally of his own “herbs,” [...]
Jesse Stuart’s Short Stories
In his short stories, the late author Jesse Stuart (1906-1984) reshaped W-Hollow into a fictional place that became part of the American imagination. His stories helped to define the Appalachian world for generations of American readers, beginning in the late 1930s and continuing to today. Stuart’s fictional world – like his real world – was the hills, hollows, and small farms of northeastern Kentucky. Readers entered an outdoor world [...]
McCauley to visit JSF to sign copies of new release Kentucky is My Home
John W. McCauley will be at the Jesse Stuart Foundation on Tuesday, June 24, at 1 p.m. to sign copies of Kentucky is My Home: A Journey Into the Life of Jesse Hilton Stuart. Following a coffee break, McCauley will deliver a 45-minute author talk that will begin at 2:30 p.m. The book signing, author talk, and meeting of the Regional Readers are free and open to the public. [...]
Jenny Wiley: Frontier Heroine
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 was an old woman, a preacher sat down with her and wrote out her captivity story. Although Jenny may have embellished it many [...]
Kentucky Derby Champion
The recently completed Kentucky Derby is the most famous horse race in history. Run at Churchill Downs in Louisville since 1875, the derby has attracted huge crowds for the last three decades. The Kentucky Derby is a significant part of the cycle of Kentucky life. Well-known humorist and country philosopher Irvin S. Cobb of Paducah, Kentucky was asked to explain the derby’s magic. “If I could do that, I’d [...]