Joseph G. Anthony, a New Jersey-born Kentucky author, moved in 1980 from what he considered the center of the country--Manhattan�s Upper West Side--to Hazard, Kentucky. "It was a place so isolated and obscure that I at first felt as lost as a missing person. But it was, I discovered, its own country." In fiction he began to explore its beauty, its many problems, its strengths and its weaknesses. �Fiction feels and understands: racism is in your face, poverty on your back. News stories can only report.�

Anthony, an English professor for 35 years, is a hybrid-Kentuckian now. His accent might still be North Eastern, but he sees with an insider-outsider�s eye. He regularly contributes essays and poems to local periodicals and anthologies, including a poem and story in Kentucky�s Twelve Days of Christmas. He�s a "Kentucky Colonel" (someone once sent his name in), but he�s more Kentucky peasant. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife of 36 years, Elise Mandel, also a hybrid Kentuckian. They have three grown children. His previous books include 2 novels, Peril, Kentucky, and Pickering�s Mountain, plus 2 short story collections, Camden Blues, and Bluegrass Funeral.

1948: Wanted: a good family for a Scott County, Kentucky tenant farm. Rudy Johnson moves his young family from nearby Lexington. Only the farm owners weren�t expecting the good family to be �colored.�

�Joe Anthony refuses to treat his characters with less than the respect such complex individuals deserve, their depth and humanity so exposed. Anthony's skillful interweaving of many narrative voices allows us to feel their pain and sorrow, their prejudice and greed and lack of guile. Flawed and only sometimes heroic, they are fellow travelers with no map of the terrain before them.� David Thurman Miller, Appalachian Heritage

Publisher: Bottom Dog Press

Pub date: 2014-10-25

Length: 212 pages