John Fox, Jr., was one of the first writers to use the mountains of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky as a backdrop for his stories and novels about a people whose culture faced extinction. Writing was not a profession he chose quickly or painlessly--he was well into middle age when he made the decision and he struggled with his choice for a long time after--but he made quite a name for himself through his work. This work is a biography of Fox. It draws from personal and family correspondence and covers his entire life, from his birth in Stony Point, Kentucky, in 1862, to his death from pneumonia in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, in 1919. It documents his early life and education at his fathers school, his two years at Transylvania University in Lexington, his transfer to Harvard and graduation in 1883, his work for the New York Sun and Times and smaller newspapers, and return home in the mid-1880s to work with his half-brother in the coal mines. It was also around this time that he began his first novel, A Mountain Europa, and over the next thirty years, wrote dozens of short stories and nine novels from the family home in Big Stone Gap, including Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (his first to gain the status of bestseller) and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.

My cathedral is in an isolated wilderness, away from contemporary blight. After several years of marriage my wife describes me as odd. I prefer eccentric. She calls me a cheapskate. I am frugal.

I also choose to be different; we put way too much emphasis on the words; Hall of Fame, legend, glamour, champion, celebrity, and famous. I may admire but never idolize, Heroes aren't on golf courses nor in stadiums but in the uniforms of our firefighters, military and police officers. There are no idols in my life. Stars are to be revered only in the night sky, not in Hollywood.

Rather than sit in a night-club involved in inane conversations I would rather see hummingbirds performing aerobatics, canoe a rogue river, watch a moose cavorting with her calf in a turbulent stream, see the Aurora Borealis fire streamers of color across a darkening sky, study undulating lines of snow geese, buffeted by lofty winds, honking their way to their mysterious destinations. There are yet unseen wonders in nature.

My adventurous nature was established when I lived for a month on a Chipewyan reservation in Manitoba hunting seal and bear from a dog sled, using harpoons and bow and arrows, living the way of their ancestors. Frogs in a well have a limited view of the limitless sky. Beyond every horizon there is a horizon.

I have canoed the Mackenzie River in Canada's Northwest Territory, the Churchill in Manitoba, Fraser River in British Columbia, the Deschutes in Oregon and the Wolverine in Nunavut. I lust to explore each wilderness on earth where overpopulation has not contaminated the environment.

Time away from the fallacies of civilization is regenerative.

WHEN GOD IS FORSAKEN IDOLATRY WILL REIGN SUPREME WHEN IDOLATRY REIGNS SUPREME EVIL WILL FLOURISH WHEN EVIL FLOURISHES THE END IS NEAR

Mike Hayden, writer and an avid outdoorsman, spent four weeks in the wilderness of the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho, searching for a 209 year old Nez Perce Indian reported to be living there. When approached, the Indian, along with an Appaloosa horse and a mountain lion, would disappear. Hayden, a Native American historian, was there to glean historical information from the man. After one week the Indian materialized, along with his horse and a tawny mountain lion He said, " My name is Cougar." While spending time together the duo discovered they were Kindred Spirits and held lengthy discussions about the dilemmas in paleface society. Over the years, the author spent time on Indian reservations in Canada, Dakotas and the Pacifi c Northwest. He lived for a month on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho where he powwowed with Elders and fished for steelhead salmon on the Clearwater River at the precise shoals where Lewis & Clark first encountered the Nez Perce in 1805.

"Episodes of Revenge" is a saga about the life of a reclusive man that experienced a mind-numbing assortment of pivotal decisions during his life and his resolute reactions to each. Early in his life Jeff Dunbar was advised by his brother to stand on his own two feet and be a reactionary when survival was in jeopardy. The death of Jeff's only brother in the Battle of the Bulge was a catalyst that precipitated his behavioral eccentricities. Dunbar's determined philosophy is Two Eyes for An Eye.

"Valley of Silent Drums" is a story of the epical encounter of the Lewis & Clark Expedition with the Nez Perce Indians in Idaho in 1805 and the deadly catastrophes that struck the Indians in the Pacific Northwest during the following 70 years. Bill York combines fiction and history to weave a compelling saga of Native American eminence and their final solution to overwhelming tribulations.

York has hosted wilderness documentaries for Georgia Public Television. He has canoed major rivers in North America and recently lived a month in a teepee on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho researching the origin of lore and legends with Nez Perce Elders, one over one hundred years old. York is active in sports having won Gold Medals in archery, tennis, table tennis and golf in the Gwinnett Senior Golden Olympics over the past three years. He is a member of Georgia Writers Association, ALTA, USTA, USTTA, the Stone Mountain Georgia Historical Society and the United States LST Association. He has lived for 30 years in Stone Mountain Georgia with his wife, Dot.