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Beyond Dark Hills
by Jesse Stuart
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Our Price:
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$17.00
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Format:
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Hardback, 416 pages
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ISBN:
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0-945084-53-6
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Publisher:
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JSF
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Pub. Date:
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1996
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About this Book:
More than sixty years ago, a young man from Kentucky gathered up $130, his Oliver typewriter, a trunk short on clothes and long on manuscript pages, and headed for Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, to see whether he could get a master's degree. He was essentially a farmer, and liked what he had heard about a group of writers at the university who were interested in the land instead of the growing industrialization of the South.
The young man was, as you may have guessed, Jesse Stuart, author of this book. What you may not have guessed is that this book was written in 1932 at Vanderbilt as a paper for an English professor who had asked his seminar students to turn in a maximum of 18 typewritten pages about themselves. In the eleven days allotted for the assignment, Jesse crammed 322 pages from border to border with the story of his young life. Embarrassed to bother his professor with a memoir so bulky, Stuart made as small a package as he could of the manuscript, waited until everybody else in the class had turned in a paper and then made an attempt to slip his work unobtrusively into the pile.
Of the 322 pages about a seemingly simple farm boy and his family, Stuart's professor said, "I have been teaching school for forty years and I have never read anything so...beautiful, tremendous, and powerful..."
Stuart added a final chapter to the paper and the manuscript was entitled "Beyond Dark Hills"--the story of a rural boy defining his role in life as he made the passage from boyhood to manhood.
The story is as relevant today as it was some sixty years ago. Here, Stuart share with the reader all his youthful anxieties as he prepares for life and then ventures forth on his own--his first "true love," his early school years, his adolescent desire to escape the confines of his parents' loving but often smothering tutelage, his short-lived stint as a carnival worker and as an apprentice blacksmith, before finding himself in college. Stuart freely shares his frustrations and successes, as he examines the forces that mold and shape him into a world-famous author and educator.
These ageless universal experiences, told as they can only be told by a vibrant, precocious young voice will evoke vivid remembrances for the reader. For the young reader who has yet to experience the transition from childhood to adulthood, this book can be an inspiring guide. For older readers, it may be a beautiful trip down memory lane.
For old and young alike, this book will lend inspiration, hope, desire and courage to make each life count. Regular Price $29.95
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View Other Books by the Author(s):
Jesse Stuart
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View Other Products in the same Category as this item:
Autobiography
Jesse Stuart's Books
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