Stephen Doster’s novel Jesus Tree!!!

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 20^th 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 20^th 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 21^st 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