-
Jesse Stuart Junior Book "What lies in the world outside of Clearwater Valley?" Sunny Logan always wondered. Twice each day, for the two years he had been going to school, he hurried to the railroad tracks. There he could watch Huey the engineer drive his engine No. 5 along the Eastern Kentucky Railroad. Sunny would not miss seeing Huey for anything in the whole world. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart -
Jesse Stuart Junior Book Red Mule is the story of a friendship between a boy named Scrappie and a strange man called "Red Mule." Red Mule had worked with mules all his life and he loved them. Now tractors were coming into use and there was little work for mules. The whole town laughed. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart -
- Song of the River
- The Trail of the Hunter's Horn
- Riverboy
- Useless Dog
- The Mooneyed Hound
-
Jesse Stuart was a paradox. For a period of his life, Jesse slept with a loaded gun under his pillow, yet he also carried a typewriter with him wherever he went. He courted woman with mud on his boots and pistols on his hips, but he had wildflowers in his hands and envelops completely covered with chicken-scratched poems in his pockets. He was petty yet often kind, mean-spirited but truly helpful to beginning writers, clannish yet hospitable to visitors HARDBACK By James M. Gifford -
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 -
Sale!
"Nothing is impossible to a determined woman."
This quote by Louisa May Alcot adorns a beautiful tote bag available at the Jesse Stuart Foundation. This large, 100 percent cotton bag is more than 16 inches deep, and it will handle books, bottles, groceries, mail and anything else you choose to carry. The bag normally retails for $35.00. You can purchase it for $28.00 on this website. It will make a meaningful gift to the "determined woman" in your life. -
In her Introduction, Glennis Stuart Liles provides some historical background on Greenup and Greenup County and then she focuses on her parents and her family in “W-Hollow Holidays and Holiday Recipes." “My parents, Martha and Mitchell Stuart, married at Plum Grove (Greenup County) and went to house keeping in W-Hollow just over the hill from the town of Greenup. They lived there until they died in the early fifties. They, and their neighbors, grew their vegetables on the rocky hillsides, milked cows, and killed their own meat. Everyone was poor, but they did their best to make holidays special. The most important part of each holiday was the food. It was served in the dining room, on a fancy tablecloth with cloth napkins and their best silverware and china. The recipes in this book are special to the people of W-Hollow. They have been used over and over on special occasions – some for more than one-hundred-fifty years.” HARDBACK VERSION By Glennis Stuart Liles -
Written and created by Joan Litteral, Angel: A Donkey's Tale is a full color, fully illustrated children's book. Illustrations by Evan and Joe Kovach. HARDBACK VERSION Joan Litteral -
Jesse Stuart Junior Book Sarah Powell had worked a day for her neighbor. For her pay, she was given the choice of a quarter or a little pig who was the runt of the litter. By Jesse Stuart Edited by Cathy R. Roberts -
Appalachian Values is a series of essays written to counter the persistent negative stereotypes about Appalachian people. The stories used to illustrate various values are accompanied by powerful photographs of Appalachian people and settings. Covering values from our Early Appalachian forebears to today, the books speaks of freedom, religion, independence, self-reliance, pride, neighborliness, hospitality, familism, personalism, humility, love of place, patriotism, sense of beauty, and sense of humor. It gives a positive view of Appalachian culture that will serve students and a general audience, too. Essays by Loyal Jones Photography by Warren Brunner -
Taps for Private Tussie won the Thomas Jefferson Southern Award in 1943, and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection that year, also. This tale about the Tussie family is a brimming mountain spring of hilarious fun and folklife. Yet never was a book read more eagerly to see what in the world will happen next. This tale is not just a story of poor white Southern mountaineers on relief. There is something universal about it. It reveals an attitude towards human life and its problems, found in people, places, and times that have no connection with Southern mountaineers. By Jesse Stuart -
In the year 1771, a white boy named Marmaduke Van Swearingen was captured by the Shawnee Indians in what is now West Virginia, but was then the edge of the American frontier. Impressed with his bravery, he was not killed but instead was taken to Ohio where he was adopted into the tribe and given the name Blue Jacket, from the blue shirt he was wearing at the time of his capture. Eckert has taken all of the known facts of Blue Jacket's life and has woven them into a narrative of compelling interest, with a very different perspective on the way America was settled. The reader will learn what life was really like on the dangerous frontier wilderness that was West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio before the Revolutionary War. By Allan Eckert -
This is a collection of folk tales, or stories based on traditional tales which originated in the Old World before America became a nation. They came to this country in the memories of the settlers and were passed on to younger generations through the oral tradition. However, as the immigrants to America began to change and develop into Americans, so did the characters in the folk tales. SOFTBACK Compiled & Edited by Loyal Jones -
Traveling The Underground Railroad: A Visitor's Guide to More Than 300 Sites describes current private homes, churches, restaurants, and halls in the United States and Canada that once served as Underground Railroad sites, and includes contact information for tourism offices and historical societies. SOFTBACK VERSION By Bruce Chadwick -
Jesse Stuart Junior Book Even though he lived on a farm and had had a number of pet animals, Andy Scott had never been able to keep a pet very long. Then Gypsy, the family cow, had a calf. Andy called him Soddy, because he was the color of the plowed clay ground. He hoped to keep the calf as a pet. Andy's father told him Soddy would have to be sold for veal, but Andy was determined to save his new friend and playmate. Filled with love for the calf, yet knowing his parents needed the money, Andy thought of a plan to suit everyone. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart -
Winning of the West: Book 1 This riveting book may well be the most historically accurate and detailed telling of the 1846-47 Donner-Reed Party's traumatic journey to California. Of the hundreds of wagon trains traveling west, only the Donner Party left an indelible imprint on our national imagination, the wagon trains fame sealed by its terrible fate. Eckert's masterful telling brings alive the Donner Party's 88 members and the fates of the eleven families and numerous single men who risked all, of whom just 51 survived. He enriches the compelling tale with vivid descriptions of the colorful characters, both in the party and among those they met: mountain men, native peoples both hostile and helpful, and more. This poignant and dramatic account provides a rigorously accurate and comprehensive telling of one of America's great pioneer sagas. SIGNED HARDBACK By Allan Eckert -
This is the journal Jesse Stuart kept following his near fatal heart attack in 1955. It was a time of his severest trial yet greatest fulfillment which began in an oxygen tent and ended with his happy return to a full and vigorous life. Here are the innermost feelings and moods of a man whose heart may give out at any moment, the new respect and even love that he develops for his heart, his thoughts about God, life, land, and home. By Jesse Stuart -
The Ohio River, a principal route for pioneers pushing westward along its 981-mile course from Pennsylvania through Kentucky and Indiana to Illinois, was the scene of fierce battles among warring Indian tribes, Shawnee, Miami, Cherokee, Iroquois, etc., and between Native Americans and white settlers. Tapping journals, letters, diaries and government memoranda from 1768 to 1799, and fleshing out his panoramic chronicle with reconstructed dialogue adapted from primary sources, historian-novelist Eckert has fashioned an epic narrative history of the struggle for dominance of the Ohio River Valley that makes compelling reading. The lives of notable pioneer families (Zanes, Bradys, Wetzels), incursions of traders, explorers, colonists, adventurers and the historic exploits of George Washington, Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark and others intersect. SOFTBACK By Allan Eckert -
Originally published in 1934, this book was so successful that the first printing of the first edition sold out in less than a month! Man With a Bull-Tongue Plow is a collection of sonnets that Stuart weaves into a personal narrative describing the rural Kentucky life and events he knew so well. Packed with emotion, and sometimes harsh observations, the poetry in this book comes from the heart of a young man who was always full of enthusiasm. At this stage of his life, Jesse Stuart was bursting with pure expression and had not yet learned to polish his poetry in an effort to make it more palatable to a broader audience and Interestingly, that's exactly what made this volume so popular. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and selected as both One of the 100 Best Books in America and One of the1000 Great Books of the World. An introduction by John H. Spurlock adds context and insight to Stuart's writing. HARDCOVER By Jesse Stuart -
Boston University, the site of the world’s finest repository of 20th Century literature, praises Billy C. Clark as “one of the South’s most distinguished writers.” In this fascinating and highly readable book, Clark, founder and editor of Virginia Writing, writes of his own astonishingly primitive childhood in an Appalachian river town, Catlettsburg, Kentucky, at the junction of the Big Sandy and the Ohio Rivers. Billy C. Clark was a member of a sprawling, ragged family. His father was an intelligent, fiddle-playing shoemaker with little formal education. His mother often took in washing to help provide food for the family. Billy grew up in a derelict house, “The Leaning Tower,” on the banks of the Ohio. Always hungry, often dirty, and without sufficient clothing, he led an adventurous life on the two rivers, swimming, fishing, and salvaging flotsam from the frequent floods. He set trout lines for fish and trap lines for mink and muskrats, and he walked fourteen miles before school to clear his traps. He learned laughter from his magnificent mother and wisdom from his father, who taught him that “poor folks have a long row to hoe….” Billy was the only one of his family to seek an education, and through his traps, his river salvage, and odd jobs, he earned money to put himself through school. The book ends with a powerful account of his parents’ pride at his graduation. Time Magazine said that this book is “as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn.” It is a touching account of a boy and two rivers. It is a must for public and school libraries, or anyone interested in Appalachian history or literature. By Billy C. Clark -
Oliver Elliott “Zeke” Stayner grew up during the Great Depression and returned to Peebles, Ohio, after serving in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. Zeke wed his hometown sweetheart, became a small-business owner, and began a family, settling into the post-war American milieu, well on his way to a happily-ever-after life. That changed in a flash on the night of the Monday after Thanksgiving, 1949, when Zeke, characteristically on a mission of mercy, was brutally slain. It’s from this event that the book draws its title, with the poignant image of a wife looking for her husband, not yet knowing what she would find, on a dark, frigid, rainy night that served as both reality and metaphor. SOFTBACK By Robert E. Hawkins -
The Big Sandy Valley — sometimes called Kentucky's last frontier — has been shaped by a series of extraordinary individuals and families over the course of the past 200 years. Hidden Heroes of the Big Sandy Valley profiles and celebrates an exclusive group of these people. The book contains 22 biographical essays and one cultural essay by 17 authors. The people who are profiled in this book are true representatives of millions of people who have populated the Big Sandy Valley for more than two hundred years. HARDBACK Compiled and edited by James M. Gifford -
A Collection of essays, short stories, and poetry from writers, including Jesse Stuart, Billy C. Clark, James B. Goode, and Thomas D. Clark. SOFTBACK -
The thirty-four stories in this collection, selected from Stuart’s 460 published stories, reveal the variety and range of his fictional world. Some reflect the excitement of growing up in Appalachia. Others portray the comedy and tragedy in the lives of the strong, rough-hewn characters of his world. Running through all of them, like a golden thread, is Stuart’s celebration of the land and its rhythms of life. SOFTBACK By Jesse Stuart
