Here's what readers are saying about Jesse Stuart - The Heritage
"David Dick brings us the legendary Jesse Stuart, from birth to grave and beyond, full-to-the bursting with a lust for life, love, literature, work, and the land where he was born, lived, and died. Surely the spirit of Jesse Stuart was with David Dick during the writing of what is a unique biography, combining history, correspondence, Stuart's poetry and prose, and some authorly imagination. More than just the facts, Dick's accounting draws heavily upon the spirit, the essence, and the full-blooded songs of the mountain plowman that made up the much-loved Kentuckian who always will be my literary hero, Jesse Stuart."
Garry Barker, author of Mountain Passage & Other Stories of Eastern Kentucky
**********
"This book is long overdue, but well worth the wait. A treasury of two great Kentucky wordsmiths-- favorite sons and kindred spirits, Jesse Stuart and David Dick -- and who better than David Dick to share with us this powerful, sensitive and intimate portrait of the great Jesse Stuart. Now, two of Kentucky's finest writers share the same pages of a Commonwealth keepsake. Dick's warm and powerful portrait, much more than a biography, of this great Kentucky writer, is faithful to Stuart's own style--honest, natural and enduring. All of us who knew Jesse Stuart only through his remarkable writings may now - through David Dick's powerful biography - get to know him on an equally fascinating private and personal level."
Byron Crawford, author and Kentucky columnist The Courier-Journal
**********
"An intimate, richly evocative portrait of a remarkable Kentuckian. David Dick's fine book may well be the first step toward restoring Jesse Stuart to his rightful place in the canon of 20th century American literature."
Ed McClanahan, author of The Natural Man
***********
"Exhuberant! Lusting for life! Keenly abreast of the nuances of rural realities! Permeated with a deep respect for the land and people of Appalachia! Expressed in the spirit of the finest tradition of mountain story-telling! These are the signature qualities of Jesse Stuart, Kentucky's most popular 20th Century writer. And these same qualities jump out at the reader of this fresh new biography of Stuart. Seldom have biographer and subject been more closely in tune. David Dick utilizes not only his exhaustive knowledge of Stuart's published works but also confidential correspondance not previously available and crucial interview material to bring Jesse Stuart alive to a whole new generation of readers. This biography often steps back and allows Stuart to speak for himself with his own words, and the result is that the reader comes away truly appreciating the values, contribution and spirit of Jesse Stuart in a way not previously possible."
George Brosi, editor, Appalachian Heritage magazine
**********
"This is an epic biography of the epic life of Jesse Stuart and is so original, so daring and heartfelt and informative that I could hardly put it down. Mr. Dick has crafted a remarkable, highly readable page-turner that will stay with me always. This book is a must-read for any lover of Stuart, literature, or down-home, no-holds-barred storytelling."
Silas House, author of Clay's Quilt
**********
"Kentucky Writers Day 2004: I am one among the poets and writers waiting to read their work when I hear David Dick's voice talking about Jesse Stuart. David Dick has a voice, in all the human and writerly senses of that word, that makes you want to listen. So I listened, and I heard him perform the skillful biographer's essential feat of ventriloquism - he brought Jesse Stuart's voice utterly alive. I read the manuscript of Dick's biography of Stuart on the long road from Kentucky back to New York and I saw that here, at last, truly and lovingly presented, was Jesse Stuart the writer, as well as the large and generous spirit of Jesse Stuart, the man whom I was privileged to correspond with and to know all too briefly. There is important material added to the historical record here, especially the ample quotation of Stuart's correspondence and the illumination of such matters as Stuart's Vanderbilt and Southern Agrarian connections, and his lifelong "quarrel" with James Still. Above all, this is the essential popular biography of Stuart, a book that should be on the shelves of all Stuart aficionados, in the libraries of all who care about Kentucky literature - make that American literature!"
H. R. Stoneback, poet and author of Singing the Springs and
Distinguished Professor of English, The State University of New York
**********
"David Dick's lyrical style creates pictures that bring alive a subject or person worthy of revisiting. Jesse Stuart is such a person and his life, causes, and passions come alive in this volume, illuminating once more his contributions to a region he loved. Writer, teacher, or "workhoss," Jesse Stuart stands as an example of the very best of eastern Kentucky. This volume deserves the attention of readers who love our land, those who workit, and especially those of us who had half forgotten how spirited Jesse could be in the flesh. That spirit lives on every page of this volume; Jesse Stuart lives on!"
Linda Scott DeRosier, author of Creeker
***********
"Like a good fiction writer, David Dick re-creates the world of W-Hollow and takes the reader into it, beginning in the frontier days of the early twentieth century when Jesse Stuart was born, through his middle years as tireless teacher, public speaker, fiction writer, poet, when he bought up the land he'd helped his father tenant farm, to the end when Stuart realized his dream of leaving to the people of Kentucky his chunk of W-Hollow as a nature preserve.
"In this story of a man and his work, a man and his land, Stuart and his wife Naomi Deane Norris become characters as real as those in a gripping novel. Stuart's over-driven heart, too, takes on a life of its own, which inevitably winds down under the demands Stuart's hard-pumping energy places on it, finally taking him away.
"David Dick's biography brings Stuart alive as no previous biography does, and opens his world to us, the same world we visit in Stuart's fiction and poems."
Jane Gentry Vance, poet and author of A Garden in Kentucky
**********
"David Dick does not pretend to a dispassionate appraisal …. From the first page he expresses a deep familiarity with and appreciation for Jesse Stuart and for the region that was so integral to Stuart's
development as writer, teacher, and man....[Dick's] inventive prose style is in itself an expression of admiration for one of the twentieth century's true icons of American literature."
Chris Holbrook, author of Hell & Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia
|
VIEW CART