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  • Articles from the Ashland Daily Independent by George Wolfford. Compiled & Edited by David Wolfford. HARDBACK VERSION George Wolfford
  • Jesse Stuart Junior Book This is the story of a teenage girl, Joy Burton, who finds a lame albino fawn in the forest. Joy, a victim of polio, feels great compassion for the injured fawn and tenderly nurses him back to health. Inspired by her pet’s recovery, Joy becomes convinced that the operation her doctor proposed for her will be successful and that she will someday be able to walk without crutches. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart
  • The Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame (2013-2017). HARDBACK By James B. Goode
  • Out of stock
    Winning of the West: Book 2 The Infinite Dream: The Opening of the Great American West, told with all the historical detail which made Allan W. Eckert famous, explores America’s westward expansion beyond the Mississippi River, 1834-1848. In this period before the Civil War, restless pioneers were casting eager eyes on the lands between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean. HARDBACK By Allan Eckert
  • Jesse Stuart labored eleven years over Album of Destiny. The idea for this work came to him in 1932 as he idly turned through the pages of an old family album which contained pictures of his youthful mother and father, posing before apple trees in bloom. Later pictures showed them worn and aged, and Stuart thought how he who was now young and in the vigor of his life must complete the same cycle that his parents had gone through. He began to write poetry for this volume in the 1930s. Before he was through he had written two thousand poems. HARDBACK, LIMITED EDITION By Jesse Stuart
  • Jesse Stuart wrote a collection of poetry, Songs of a Mountain Plowman, that was published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation in 1986, two years after Stuart's death. The book was edited by the late Jim Wayne Miller, a great Appalachian scholar and long-time member of the JSF Board of Directors. Twenty-five years after its first appearance, the JSF re-issued this Special Edition hardback, an important book for Stuart fans who wish to understand Stuart's development as a poet. HARDBACK By Jesse Stuart
  • Sharon McDonald grew up on a farm near Shelbyville in Bedford County, Tennessee, and, more the seven decades later, she still lives in the same house and on that same land, Her story of family live covers four generations, It is a strong contribution to our understanding of the hard-working middle class that has made America a great nation - a middle class that is beginning to appear more frequently in Appalachian memoirs. It is a gracefully written remembrance that neither exploits nor exaggerates the difficulties of rural life in southern Appalachia. It is a rich tapestry of the work, emotions, thoughts, and words of a family that represents millions of unrecognized rural people who are the true flesh and blood of history. SOFTBACK By Sharon McDonald
  • Written by a beloved American author who grew up in the foothills of the Appalachians, these twenty-one short stories explore the daily lives and activities of Kentucky mountaineers. Life, animate existence, absorbs Jesse Stuart. Never is it more vital than when juxtaposed with death, hence the contrasting motifs of life and death permeating his work. In this book, Stuart tells the stories of the hills and the men who live there. They “curse the mountains,” but love them too, he says. Existing in dimensions of real geography and elaborate imagination, Stuart moves easily between autobiography and fiction and often does not bother to distinguish one from the other. Greenup County, Kentucky blends into Greenwood County, and W-Hollow in both fiction and fact is subject to the proprietorship of the bard of Appalachia. By Jesse Stuart
  • Here are twenty-one tales from Kentucky’s inimitable and beloved storyteller, Jesse Stuart. Full of high, rambunctious humor, quick-paced as a maple tree against an October hill—these stories are Stuart in his best form—the form that has made him one of most widely read authors in America. Read here about the man who coveted a steam shovel and stole it piece by piece, or about the celebrated eating contest between Sam Whiteapple and the game rooster, or about the hill farmer who wanted to clear and farm one last spot of new ground before he died. Although he has a sharp eye for human foibles and infirmities, Stuart never fails to write of his people with affection or to see that justice is done them. By Jesse Stuart
  • Throughout these stories the Kentucky hill country is a persuasive evocative background. It is in this land of sharp contrasts and powerful traditions, between barren, razorbacked hills of rock and yellow clay and lush green valleys, that a proud people act out the daily drama of their lives, here recorded by Jesse Stuart's sensitive pen. By Jesse Stuart
  • Come Gentle Spring, a collection of twenty short stories, was first published in 1969. The title clearly reflects Jesse Stuart's philosophy of life, the joy and hopefulness he feels for humanity, symbolized by the coming to Spring. Jesse Stuart's works always seem to focus on the essential goodness of humanity. He depicts a simple world where people exist the best they can. He focuses on the positive and life-enriching qualities of laughter, joy, respect, kindness, and love. By Jesse Stuart
  • Out of stock
    Seven By Jesse is a collection of stories originally published by the Indiana Council of Teachers of English in 1970. These stories share a common theme, as they deal with survival of old ways of life in Appalachia and with a culture in transition. By Jesse Stuart
  • In twenty not-so-tall tales about rural politics in the South in rougher and tougher days, Jesse Stuart reminds us afresh that there's nothing new about political skull-duggery. The fact that he puts such labels as the Little Party and the Big Party or the Greenoughs and the Dinwiddies on the candidates doesn't mean they aren't the same old Republicans and Democrats you know so well-the wonderful folks who put Watergate on your TV screen. HARDBACK By Jesse Stuart
  • The Jesse Stuart Foundations Monograph Series. By Jesse Stuart
  • This selection of stories span Stuart's entire career as a writer of short stories. None of the stories have been previously published in any of the collections of his short stories. The book includes Stuart's thoughts on the literary form of the short story, first published in 1975, and never reprinted. David R. Palmore searched through many magazines and journals, some quite obscure, to bring together the collection. By Jesse Stuart
  • A collection of essays aimed at personal eternal areas rather than commentary on time oriented subjects. To Stuart, in these essays, it is okay to enjoy the reading and "get away from it all." By Jesse Stuart
  • This collection of early poems shows the literary promise of a boy who spent his childhood roaming the hills of eastern Kentucky, listening to the foxes and screech owls, to the river and the wind. By Jesse Stuart
  • Jesse Stuart's strong views on teaching, delinquency, and parental responibilities, as well as his sharp assessment of boards of education, are more than a novelist's imagination. Mr. Gallion's School is based on Jesse Stuart's years of personal experience as a principal and teacher. As one of America's most popular writers, Stuart makes teaching and high school administration come alive in a moving and impassioned novel. Mr. Gallion's School is an enjoyable read that's great for high school students and out-of-school adults. A powerful reminder of the sacrifices that earlier generations made in order to get an education, it's a book with a great character education message in every chapter. By Jesse Stuart
  • It is a calm September evening in the Kentucky hill town of Blakesburg. Suddenly, the sky is filled with light, brighter than the moon. Thus, Jesse Stuart sets the stage for the small town citizens who have decided Judgment Day has come upon them in this rollicking novel. By Jesse Stuart
  • In The Good Spirit of Laurel Ridge, Jesse Stuart provides a tale of the Kentucky hill country which constantly excites, amuses, and amazes. The central character of this book is Theopolis Akers, "Old Opp" to his friends, the hermit of Laurel Ridge who is recognized as one of Stuart's most colorful character creations. Hermit, squatter, steadfast believer in the world of the spirits (sperets, he calls them), "Old Opp" lives a simple life atop deserted Laurel Ridge. He spends his days tilling his small patch of corn, gathering roots and nuts, or fishing with his bow and arrow. By night he sits on his porch, chews calmus weed, and listens to the wind blowing through the horse-hair harp strung up on the cabin wall. If he wants company, there is always his hound dog to talk to or various spirits to commune with including his dead wife, Beadie. By Jesse Stuart
  • Previously unpublished, this is Stuart's first novel, written in 1932 and covering the frustrating, tumultuous year he spent as superintendent of the Greenup County, Ky., schools before deciding to return to Nashville to devote himself to writing. By Jesse Stuart
  • Kentucky’s history is an important part of American development because the state lay directly in the path of the great westward movement. It was in Kentucky that the early adjustments to the rigors of frontier life were made. Along the Kentucky River, Daniel Boone and a small band of settlers repulsed British and Indian thrusts to guard the back door of the struggling young nation during the Revolution. Under George Rogers Clark, the Kentuckians even carried the fight to British and Indian concentrations along the Ohio. HARDBACK By Thomas D. Clark
  • Mark My Words: Tales of Brandon Webb, O.J. Mayo, and Other Sports Legends of Northeastern Kentucky SOFTBACK By Mark Maynard
  • The people, the lore, even the sounds of eastern Kentucky come vividly to life in this affectionate story of a boy and his search dog. In the shadow of Sourwood Mountain, fourteen-year-old Aram Tate is absorbed in the sometimes painful process of growing up. His all-consuming passion is to own a hound dog of his very own, and his efforts to achieve this dream involve him in a series of amusing adventures which broaden his boy's-eye view of the world. Through his friendship with ne'er-do-well Eb ringtom, Aram Learns the ways of men as they never were described in books. Among the other colorful characters who contribute to the boy's education are Lighting and Napoleon, two imcomparably wily gamecocks; Thusla, Eb's great hound whose exploits can only be described as apocryphal; and Rile Feder and his dog, the bluetick Tweedle, who fears neither coon nor fox. SOFTBACK By Billy C. Clark  
  • Patriots & Heroes: Eastern Kentucky Soldiers of WW II profiles the physical pain, and also the psychological and emotional stress suffered by a dozen of America's Citizen Soldiers in WW II. Their stories are representative of the courage, suffering, sacrifice and separation faced by the American GIs of that war. Included among these twelve are stories of POWs, KIAs, MIAs and many that returned home safely to become valuable, productive members of their community. The author uses interviews, letters, documents, and personal experiences to poignantly present their stories. HARDBACK By Jack D. Ellis
  • In the little Appalachian town of Sourwood, life at the end of the Great Depression may have been tough, but it was rich beyond compare.

 Building on a distinguished body of work celebrating and preserving mountain culture, renowned writer Billy C. Clark once again revisits his boyhood during a bygone era. By Way of the Forked Stick offers four fictional stories drawn from the author's childhood experiences of the 1930s—tales that vividly convey the down-home spirit of a lost way of life. By Billy C. Clark
  • This sense of appreciation for earth and its creatures runs through all of the poems in To Leave My Heart at Catlettsburg and results in a poignant literacy tribute, a gift to a town and its people. Beyond that, this book reminds all readers to observe the world more carefully and to listen more sensitively, to be more alive to the beauty and sturggles around us, to be more grateful for passing through. By Billy C. Clark
  • The mountain is a lonely place. Welcome to Sourwood, a small Kentucky town inhabited by men and women unique and yet eerily familiar. Among its joyful and tragic citizens we meet the crafty, spirited Caleb and his curious younger brother; Pearl, a suspected witch, and her sheltered daughter, Thanie; superstitious Eli; and the doomed orphan Girty. In Sourwood, the mountain is both a keeper of secrets and an imposing, isolating presence, shaping the lives of all who live in its shadow. Strong in both the voice and sensibilities of Appalachia, the stories in Miss America Kissed Caleb are at turns heartbreaking and hilarious. In the title story, young Caleb turns over his hard-earned dime to the war effort when he receives a coaxing kiss from Miss America, who sweeps into Sourwood by train, "pretty as a night moth." Caleb and his brother share in the thrills and uncertainties of growing up, making an accidental visit to a brothel in "Fourth of July" and taming a "high society" pooch in "The Jimson Dog." These stories invoke a place and a time that have long passed―a way of living nearly extinct―yet the beauty of the language and the truth revealed in the characters' everyday lives continue to resonate with modern readers. By Billy C. Clark
  • In 1990, the Kentucky General Assembly honored Thomas D. Clark by declaring him Kentucky’s Historian Laureate for life, at which time Governor Brereton Jones described him as “Kentucky’s greatest treasure.” Thomas D. Clark of Kentucky; An Uncommon Life in the Commonwealth is a celebration and exploration of the unparalleled life and career of a man who has both recorded the history and shaped the future of his adopted home state. Born on July 14th 1903, in Louisville, Mississippi, to a cotton farmer and a public school teacher, Clark was the oldest of seven children. Before enrolling in high school at age eighteen, he worked on a farm, in a sawmill, and as a cabin boy and deck hand on a dredge boat. After attending the University of Mississippi and earning graduate degrees at the University of Kentucky and Duke University, Clark joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky in 1931. There he chaired the history department from 1942 until 1965, influencing the lives of thousands of students.  
  • When Thomas D. Clark was hired to teach history at the University of Kentucky in 1931, he began a career that would span nearly three-quarters of a century and would profoundly change not only the history department and the university but the entire Commonwealth. His still-definitive History of Kentucky(1937) was one of more than thirty books he would write or edit that dealt with Kentucky, the South, and the American frontier. By Thomas D. Clark
  • In the fall of 1829, young Robert Wilmot Scott rode away from Frankfort Kentucky on a trip that would take him through nine states. His journal entries about those travels present a vivid picture of Jacksonian America and of the prominent people of that era. Excellent pen portraits of James and Dolly Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, James Buchanan, Sam Houston, Edward Everett, John C. Calhoun, John Randolph, John Quincy Adams, and others show Scott to be a famous Webster-Hayne debate; he gives a rich account of that discussion and its personalities. By Thomas D. Clark

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