This collection takes the reader all the way back to the Civil War for a story of an immigrant union soldier and features four stories from the Great Depression years (1930s), with another story set during World War II in 1943. The soldier is fresh off a Kentucky hillside farm at the foot of the Appalachians and is not required to serve, but he and two brothers, all born in England, decide to serve. The four 1930s-era yarns deal with an untimely death, a necessary killing on a night-passenger train, a teenage baseball phenomenon, and a police detective whose sidekick is often a newspaper reporter who is also a popular restaurant/lounge pianist. The WWII story deals with the harsh realities connected with war and the heartbreak they cause in a small Kentucky town. The remaining five stories are more or less current and deal with such things as alleged manmade global-warming and consequent governmental silliness, college-football corruption, technology, reawakened spiritual convictions, and a tragic, lost weekend in Tennessee. They deal with a laid-off worker, a university walk-on athlete, a computer genius with unusual expertise, a minister who temporarily has lost his way, and two “good ol’ boys,” who throw a bender big-time with disastrous results.

CONTENTS

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The Gadget Man

Joe Bob and Cecil

Will

December in May

Johnny and the Mortgage

Bear Hug

A Rude Awakening

Sodom & Gomorrah!

The Walk-On

The Inspector

The Way It Was

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ISBN: 978-1-105-11136-5