Stephen Doster’s novel Jesus Tree!!!
Stephen Doster’s long-awaited novel based on based
on a true story, Jesus Tree, has been released and is now available. See below
links for immediate purchase.
Knowing this really happened gives you a whole
different perspective of what it was like for blacks and poor whites in the
south during the early 20th century.
In the summer of 1932, Ben, a black man originally
from Sapelo Island, Georgia, heads to Waycross to hunt for work with his cousin
Eli. Eli is lynched on a tall Georgia pine, for a crime he did not commit,
which the people then named the “Jesus Tree.” Then Ben is wrongfully accused of
murdering a white Methodist preacher. In fear for his family’s life, he is
framed by the most influential man in town, Clayborne Cutler, and given forty
years in a prison camp. What transpires between 1932 and 1972 will stay with
you forever. Ben’s faith, integrity, and honor triumph over all evil.
Doster’s
first novel, Lord Baltimore, published by John F. Blair in
2002 and nominated for the Pulitzer
the same year, is the fictional account of a young man’s travels through Gullah
country along the Georgia coast. His
second book, Voices from St. Simons: Personal Narratives of an Island’s Past, published by John F. Blair in 2008, is an oral history of the island’s people.
Deer Hawk Publications fell in love with his works
two years ago with an immediate release of Doster’s nonfiction, Georgia
Witness, a compilation of twenty-six interviews with some of the most
influential Georgians of the 20th and 21st centuries: Griffin Bell, Ruby Crawford, Willie
Mae Robinson, Bill Brown, Irene Cordell, Sam Massell, Jr., Patrick Demere,
William Ladson, Floyd Faust, Lucian Sneed, Clarice Strother, Vic Waters, Chuck
Leavell, Pat McDonald, Ron Edenfield, Harriet Gilbert, Bob Woodward, Ted
Dennard, Lewey Cato, Bootie Wood, Charles Gowen, Sonny Gibson, Dot White, Oscar
Cruz, Mack Mattingly and Billy Winn. “Can’t” was never in any of their
vocabularies either!
Six months
later came Shadow
Child which chronicles a
historical artifact and the people it impacted from 1597 to the 21st
century. Exceptional historical writing written so well you could smell the
musket powder from the first story and it kept you spellbound until the last
word!
Next came Rose Bush, a southern novel which
humorously and seriously exposes
conflicts between environmentalists, a paper mill, and the aristocracy of a
rural Georgia town. Simply one of the best depictions of the way things are
done in the South.
Stephen Doster was born
in England and grew up on St. Simons Island, Georgia. He is a student of
history and has extensively researched the Gullah and Geechee cultures of South
Carolina and Georgia. He received a degree in Marketing from the University of
Georgia and has recently received his Master of Liberal Arts and Science degree
with a certificate in history and is an assistant editor for a peer-review
journal at Vanderbilt University. Stephen has appeared at BookExpo, the
Southern Festival of Books, the Amelia Island Book Festival, The Southern
Kentucky Book Fest and has spoken at colleges, historical societies, and
library associations in Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He has been
interviewed on public radio and television in Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida,
and Georgia. Currently, he is an assistant editor for a peer-review journal at
Vanderbilt University.
www.sdoster.com Represented by Loiacono
Literary Agency www.loiaconoliteraryagency.com.
Published by Deer Hawk Publications www.deerhawkpublications.com
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