Rural America

A novel in the historical fiction genre set in the rural landscape of Gilead during the early 20th century. "Under the River's Gaze" is a poignant tapestry of life in the tranquil village of Gilead. Set primarily along the serene Moosatuk River, spanning the early 1900s, the novel details the intersecting lives of its characters against the backdrop of an untouched natural landscape edging into modernization. Central to the story are Robert Lawson and Dr. Russell, two seasoned outdoorsmen who engage in deep, philosophical reflections while hunting, serving as witnesses to Gilead’s looming...

The DePriest Gang Book Series includes research on the evolution of the DePriest family in America: Volume 1 (c 1650-1750) starts with Robert DePriest, French Huguenot, who immigrated before 1689 and includes a wealth of information about early New Kent and Goochland, Virginia. Copies of original documents are included and data were obtained from Parish documents, Tax lists, Processioning Lists, War records, Censuses, Maps, Comparison tables, and more. Documentation includes not only the DePriests and their descendants but also neighbors as well as conspirators and Revolutionary soldiers. ...

A Cricket of a Girl is a historical fiction/coming-of age novel. Set in the tiny, war-stricken Latin American country of El Salvador, in the 1950s and 1960s, it is the story of the unlikely friendship of two women, one American and one Salvadorian, who form an unlikely friendship in spite, or perhaps because of the poverty, sexual abuse and death they have been forced to confront. A Cricket of a Girl is a heartwarming and optimistic tale that will stay with you long after you put down the book.

Charles D. Thompson, Jr., was born in Southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet, as he came of age, he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of Eastern Kentucky.

On December 6, 1941, the rural township of Cussler was making final preparations for the town’s Christmas gala held every year. Nobody in the township, or the entire country, could predict that Sunday, December 7, 1941, would end far differently than anyone would ever imagine. The following morning during the gala, news broke of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The mood turned from celebratory to solemn in a matter of minutes as the reports of the attack on the Pacific Fleet came in. After the attack, the nation became galvanized, and over the coming weeks and months, the ...

The sheriff of Pine Falls, Nebraska, has his hands full. When Ernie Rucker passed away, he left his house and money to the town. It was put into a trust in the sheriff’s name with the specification that it be spent to benefit the community. The men in Pine Falls and surrounding area far outnumbered the women. When the sheriff learned the plight of eight desperate young ladies back east with nowhere to live, it caught his attention. He could bring the ladies to Pine Falls. It seemed like a perfect match, but once he set the wheels in motion, nothing seemed to go as planned. WARNING: The ...

This book is about the resort at Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee from 1900 to 1945. Also, there are articles about its many famous visitors including a Speaker of the US House, and a jazz legend. It also explores the search for mythical gold and silver mines there and an archeologist’s efforts to prove that Neanderthal man inhabited nearby caves. There are many other items mentioned as well.

Pastor Roye is recuperating in Florida and spends his mornings listening to radio preachers. They have done great works for God and will be the first to tell you so. Roye finds himself wanting when he compares their great deeds to his own. He has never done anything great. He has just plugged away, all his life, and now he is old: retirement age. A question hangs in the air, and he's too afraid to say it out loud: What if Marshland Baptist Church retires him?

Autumn whispered to the wind, “I fall but always rise again.” For a long time, tree sprite Scarlet Oak has watched autumn fall and rise in the same way amidst her forested society of sprites. Wingless and bound to live and die with her birth oak, Horace, she longs for a deeper existence. Then, in 1977, her world is shaken when an autistic boy wanders into her woodland and they share a soulful moment before he takes his life on her tree. Smis, a Grim Reaper, arrives to usher the boy’s spirit to the Dark, but Scarlet insists that the boy did not intend to die. In a rare show of mercy, ...

Allison: When I left for California, I gave myself a new name and never looked back. Now my carefully crafted good-girl image is getting torn to shreds in the press thanks to my Oscar-winning A-hole of an ex-boyfriend. So I escape to the only safe haven I know and trust - my hometown - to take a breather while I plot my triumphant Hollywood comeback. However, when I arrive at my parents’ house, Jackson Burke answers the door instead. And suddenly the past comes rushing back.... Jackson: First kiss. First time. First love. Allison Murphy and I shared a lot of firsts.

He’s in it to win it. But when he brings in a troubled teen as a ringer, is the price of success too high? Vietnam vet Donny Doyle has a job no one wants: coaching Tsalagee High’s basement-dwelling football team. And despite the school’s decade-long record of failure, he promises to deliver the backwater Oklahoma town a state championship. But the only way to do it is to recruit a terrifying, mammoth kid straight out of juvenile detention. Battling his own PTSD, Coach Doyle struggles to tame his ticking time bomb of a player into a disciplined gridiron beast. And after a fast five-win...

Uncle Sam’s Plantation is an incisive look at how government manipulates, controls, and ultimately devastates the lives of the poor—and what Americans must do to stop it. Once a hustler and welfare addict who was chewed up and spit out by the ruthless welfare system, Star Parker sheds much needed light on the bungled bureaucratic attempts to end poverty and reveals the insidious deceptions perpetrated by self-serving politicians.

A searing, on-the-ground examination of the collapsing coal industry - and the communities left behind - in the midst of an economic and environmental crisis. The past few years have highlighted the paradox at the heart of coal country. Despite fueling a century of American progress, the people at the heart of coal country are being left behind, suffering from unemployment, the opioid epidemic, and environmental crises often at greater rates than anywhere else in the country. But what if Appalachia’s troubles are just a taste of what the future holds for all of us?

A small-town girl with a tragic past - An English billionaire with a secret - An old ranch that brings them together When a handsome, brooding stranger from England finds his way to the small American town called Misty Springs and turns everyone’s lives upside down, Abigail is forced to question everything she’s ever believed in. It's suddenly obvious that opposites do attract. Despite her reluctance, Thomas wiggles his way into her heart. Sparks fly, and nothing will ever be the same again. But just when she may have found true happiness, a secret threatens to destroy everything. This ...

An exploration of family, our desires, and our shortcomings. FYI: References to He-Man and Wiffle ball are included. --- It has been years since Keenan had been to the farm. He had vowed to move on, to move up, but this has brought him back. To his introverted older brother and confident sister. After this, their lives will never be the same.

When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the DC metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe.

Set in the apocalyptic atmosphere of 1900 - a time when many Americans were looking for signs foretelling the end of the world - Feather Crowns is the story of a young woman who unintentionally creates a national sensation. A farm wife living near the small town of Hopewell, Kentucky, Christianna Wheeler gives birth to the first recorded set of quintuplets in North America. Christie is suddenly thrown into a swirling storm of public attention. Thousands of strangers descend on her home, all wanting too see and touch the "miracle babies."

The Black River flows from Missouri into Arkansas, east of Branson and west of the Bootheel. It meanders where the foothills of the Ozarks begin to rise out of the Mississippi plain. The area was sparsely populated when E. R. Coleman was a young man. Like the population they served, businesses were modest, mostly small, and scattered. Arkansas was still the Bear State; slogans boasting that it was - or predicting that it would become - the "Land of Opportunity" were yet to be conceived.

The Reverend has two Sons. Christian and Harry could not be more different from one another, but they have always been close. Or at least they used to be. The polished, alluring socialite Anna Clark has arrived in town and now everything has changed. Between love and pride, each Son will have to prove himself against the upheaval of a country recovering from tragedy to embrace love. Christian Beechum is the good son. As the elder son of a respected Illinois family at the turn of the century, Christian dutifully sets aside his own creative talents and dreams to take his place in the family ...

A new college president takes a fantastic journey in western North Dakota. He steps into an idyllic, rural community. But within a year, the small-town stage of Williston meteorically and unexpectedly shoots to world fame after the discovery of rich oil reserves far beneath the picturesque farmland. Isolated, abandoned, and surrounded by turmoil, the college president joins forces with local heroes, leveraging the community, and the bottomless reservoir of resilience and do-it-yourself values, to keep their small town great.