Rural America

The Black River flows from Missouri into Arkansas, east of Branson and west of the Bootheel. It meanders where the foothills of the Ozarks begin to rise out of the Mississippi plain. The area was sparsely populated when E. R. Coleman was a young man. Like the population they served, businesses were modest, mostly small, and scattered. Arkansas was still the Bear State; slogans boasting that it was - or predicting that it would become - the "Land of Opportunity" were yet to be conceived.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

For many nonprofit organizations, volunteers have served a vital purpose in roles ranging from administrative to facility management. With an aging population and the reality of baby boomers entering the next phase of their lives, new ways of recruiting these mature, skilled individuals as volunteers are emerging. Through his research, Dr. Jesse Bolinger presents a compelling case for how their past work experience, educational background, and mental health can play a significant role and be a tool for retaining them in areas that best suit these three basic elements.

Charlotte MacHen has been the Sheriff of Webb County, Georgia, for five years and settled into a tranquil family life with her college professor husband, Matt Hardt, and her daughter, Harper Jean. But her peaceful existence is suddenly disrupted when a serial killer makes quiet Webb County his home before branching into rural northern Georgia. Sheriff MacHen heads up a task force to hunt down the ruthless killer with help from a retired homicide detective from Florida, Bill Isbell. Together they navigate the complexities of the crime while tediously investigating and eliminating suspects. ...

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Seven years in the making, Amity and Prosperity tells the story of the energy boom's impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia and of one woman's transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist. Stacey Haney is a local nurse working hard to raise two kids and keep up her small farm when the fracking boom comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania. Intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases in her neighbours' mailboxes, she strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company.

Growing up gifted and working-class in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of learning as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives - broken marriages, shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for university and fulfilled her dreams. Darci, along with many in their circle of friends, did not.

A new college president takes a fantastic journey in western North Dakota. He steps into an idyllic, rural community. But within a year, the small-town stage of Williston meteorically and unexpectedly shoots to world fame after the discovery of rich oil reserves far beneath the picturesque farmland. Isolated, abandoned, and surrounded by turmoil, the college president joins forces with local heroes, leveraging the community, and the bottomless reservoir of resilience and do-it-yourself values, to keep their small town great.

In "Master and Man," Bobbie is a black man who can outride, outfight, and outshoot any white man in the mountain desert. His unwavering moral code serves as a model for his often cruel and dissolute white master.

During 42 years of family medicine in rural Iowa, I had a number of cases where I definitely felt there was divine intervention to help patients that I cared for. In this book I describe eleven individual cases of patients who were cured or saved by human intervention and, more importantly, attention from the good Lord. I have not exaggerated or embellished these descriptions. Many other doctors and nurses probably have similar stories and cases to relate. Please enjoy these true tales of how the Lord works during times of medical need.

"We live so far in the backwoods, we have to pump sunshine through hollow logs," young Susanette's daddy says, when asked where the Howell family lives. Their cracker house, which has never been slapped by a loaded paintbrush, sits on a small tobacco farm near the Suwannee River in North Florida, 18 miles from the small town of Live Oak - a town that was, at the turn of the 19th century, the fifth largest town in Florida and the largest inland city in the state.

After five years of virtual banishment because he sold out his small outfit to the Middle Arizona Cattle Company, giving it a foothold on the Mesa Grande range, violent-tempered Joe Bonnyman is summoned back to Lodgepole by his father when it appears that a cattle war between the syndicate and the various rangers is imminent. During his short stay in town, Joe has an unpleasant meeting with Ed Merrill, the brother of a girl Joe had once courted.

It's 1951, and Miranda's mother has just married into one of the wealthiest families on Winthrop Island, a glamorous haven set off the New England coast. But beneath the surface, the island is a delicate balance of tension between the wealthy summer families who holiday there and the Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who keep the island going. As Miranda begins to fall for Joseph, the lighthouse keeper's handsome son, the tension rises inexorably to the surface, and an explosive end to the summer will change everyone forever....

Cops in the Wilderness How the COVID-19 Pandemic Impacted Rural Policing As cities emptied, the countryside changed—forever. When the COVID-19 pandemic sent shockwaves through urban life, millions fled crowded cities for the open spaces of rural America. But what happened when the stressors of big-city living followed them into small-town communities? Cops in the Wilderness explores how the pandemic didn't just change public health—it transformed the very landscape of rural law enforcement. Through sharp analysis and on-the-ground perspective, this book uncovers the hidden challenges ...

In the recent years, people have studied the unusual increase in the number of prime-aged men who are unemployed. According to Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, the drop of the share of prime-aged men in the labor market in other prosperous democracies has never been as severe as it is in the United States.

In this captivating anthology, "Baseball Dreams and Bikers" explores the fragility of dreams, the impact of familial bonds, and the unforeseen challenges that can shape lives. Each story immerses readers in a world where aspirations collide with the complexities of existence, painting a vivid portrait of the human spirit's resilience and the choices that define our paths. In "Someone Anonymous," the search for a missing piece of oneself takes center stage. As readers ponder whether they should be living a different life and if there is an untapped version of themselves yearning to break ...

Der Pulitzer-Preis-Finalist und National Book Critics Circle Award-Preisträger von Newjack führt durch ein wildes Amerika abseits des Zivilisation, wo es neben Unabhängigkeit und atemberaubenden Aussichten auch heftige Winde, Nachbarn mit krimineller Vergangenheit und minimale staatliche und medizinische Versorgung gibt.

It’s 1985 in The Territory and it always will be. It’s so cold you can’t feel your feet and from here the outside world is just a dream, but two humans and one animal will show us the way. They’re each searching for someone, a woman who washed up on the shores of this far-flung town and then disappeared. To find her they will have to look deep into the darkness that lies at the edge of love. Heartbreaker is an astounding feat of imagination with its own riotous rhythm and the resounding message that humanity can be found in the wildest of places.