Book One
Tommy Mack: An Appalachian Childhood
When 15-year-old Myrtle Jones married Harold "Sleepy" Dixon in 1937, she had no idea what she was getting into. More predator than provider, Sleepy sometimes worked in the mines; that is, when he wasn't downtown "on-a-drunk," somewhere making moonshine, or locked up for public drunkenness and barroom fights.
Absent a father or not, the Dixon family moved frequently throughout Virginia and West Virginia, surviving on welfare and pickings from their gardens. Meanwhile, Tommy found solace in the bonds of family and the wonders of nature, until that dreaded day when his father finally returned home.
The first book, Tommy Mack: An Appalachian Childhood (344 pages), is now available. It tells the story of young Tommy's tumultuous childhood growing up poor in the coalfields of southwestern Virginia during the 1950s and early 1960s. It was a life of sharecropping, guns, moonshine, swimming holes, the family roosting in a one-room schoolhouse, and walking barefoot through the seasons. Although times were hard (shadowed by violence, domestic abuse, and alcoholism), there was also much love and raucous fun in Tom's early years.
This compelling memoir will appeal to many readers, especially those who have experienced childhood adversity and found solace through the enduring joys of family and nature. Please note that some names and places mentioned in these books have been changed for privacy reasons.
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