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Junior High and High School teachers who wish to introduce their students to Jesse Stuart have a unique teaching tool available in A Jesse Stuart Reader. This 352-page book was designed as a classroom text, and consists of eighteen stories, twenty-six poems, and excerpts from three autobiographical books — God’s Oddling, The Thread That Runs So True, and The Year of My Rebirth. An additional study and teaching aid is Ella DeMer’s 31-page “Commentary and Study Questions” section at the end of the book. Schools ordering 30 or more copies may purchase the book at $9 per copy, a 40% discount. Although most classroom sets are purchased for grades 7-12, this book is effective at the collegiate level, too. Please contact the JSF directly to take advantage of bulk discounts. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart -
The Sparks family, salty old Peg Sparks, his wife Arn, and their 16-year-old son Sparkie lived in the Plum Grove Hills in a one room cabin. They don't have a lot, but they would not turn a stray hound dog away from their door and certainly not a stray boy like pale, spindly Didway Hargis, who has run away from his wealthy home in town. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart COLLECTOR EDITIONS ARE AVAILABLE; PLEASE CONTACT THE JSF DIRECTLY -
A fictionalized account of the life of Jennie Sellards Wiley, who spent a year as an Indian captive in Kentucky and eventually escaped and returned to her husband in Virginia. SOFTBACK VERSION By Arville Wheeler -
SOFTBACK VERSION By Wilma Dykeman -
Out of stock
Coming Down Cumberland: A History of the Maggard Family of Eastern Kentucky By V.N. "Bud" Phillips -
In this family history, “Raft Tide and Railroad: How We Lived and Died — Collected Memories and Stories of an Appalachian Family and Its Seventh Son,” Appalachian author, poet, and editor Dr. Edwina Pendarvis, was guided by sage advice from a grandmother, Jet Johnson, known only to her through family stories and photographs. Not long before Johnson was murdered, she asked one of her sons to note the strength of a bundle of twigs – as opposed to an individual twig – and see it as a metaphor for family strength – a metaphor originated by an earlier Appalachian – the warrior Tecumseh. In “Raft Tide and Railroad,” the author has preserved her family’s history and recognized its strength through accounts that span seven generations of experiences in Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia from the early 1800s to the present. SOFTBACK VERSION By Edwina Pendarvis -
By Thomas J. Davis -
Amid war and the fading dream of the Confederacy, a wounded soldier and a destitute widow discover the true meaning of Christmas — and of sacrificial love. By Tamera Alexander -
Growing Up in the Last Small Town: A West Virginia Memoir is a humorous and poignant account of Bob Barnett, a bad student and undersized athlete coming of age in the 1950’s, but it is also the story of all of us who grew up in small towns across America between 1940 and 1960. It was a time of simple pleasures that included shedding winter coats on the first day of spring, playing baseball until dark, watching four-hour children’s matinees on Saturday, and breaking plates in the town dump, our favorite playground. It was a time when we wrote term papers, ate fish sandwiches at the Fireman’s Carnival, cheered our high school teams, and lived for soak hops and dances –a time when getting the right date for the prom was more important than the election of the president. The story is set in the unincorporated pottery town of Newell, West Virginia and captures the rhythm of life in small towns that we thought would never change. But change came quickly. Television became a staple of modern life in the 1950s offering Elvis, the evening news, and a vivid view of our changing world. School consolidations robbed the towns of their souls, supermarkets eliminated the need for corner grocery stores, and the closing of mills and factories brought an end to small towns as we knew them. The generation whose story is told in this book grew up in the last small town in America. SOFTBACK By Bob Barnett -
In the late 1940s, Janice and Henry Giles moved from Louisville, Kentucky, back to the Appalachian hill country where Henry had grown up and where his family had lived since the time of the Revolution. With their savings, the couple bought a ramshackle house and forty acres of land on a ridge top and set out to be farmers like Henry's forebears. To this personal account of the trials of a city woman trying to learn the ways of the country and of her neighbors, Janice Holt Giles brings the same warmth, humor, and powers of observation that characterize her novels. Enlightening and evocative, personal and universally pertinent, this description of a year of "backaches, fun, low ebbs, and high tides, and above all a year of eminent satisfaction" will be welcomed by Janice Holt Giles's many readers, old and new. Janice Holt Giles (1905-1979), author of nineteen books, lived and wrote near Knifley, Kentucky, for thirty-four years. Her biography is told in Janice Holt Giles: A Writer's Life. SOFTBACK VERSION By Janice Holt Giles -
A biography of Jesse's father, Mitchell Stuart - a rural man who could not read or write. But Mick Stuart had learned the important things in life from the hills around him. He began his work before daylight, and stopped only when his family, his farm, and his animals were cared for. Jesse Stuart tells how his father taught him the unalterable values of right and wrong, love of family, and love of education. By Jesse Stuart -
A reprint of Stuart's 1952 poetry collection with a new afterword by Jim Wayne Miller. By Jesse Stuart
