Great 2 Read Books

As part of an ongoing series highlighting new writing talent, here is the latest " Interv iew of the Imagination" with author Christy Elkins.     The author of children's books such as Noah's Mark, The Seedling Heart and adult novels such as Parallel, Lilac Hill , and The Dusty Road . As always, the interviews start in a place of special meaning or significance to the author or their work.  So, on that ship of the mind let us set sail... I caught up with author Christy Elkins in 1982, on the airy verandah at the back of her grandmother’s farm house, in Durant, Oklahoma.  As  we sip our glasses of iced tea there is the soft sound of her grandmother's voice crooning old hymns in a sweet voice accompanied by the grease crackling as she fries chicken for us.  ###   Tell me Christy, when you are not writing or being you, what is your work or activity? I’ve been many things; a photographer, insurance agent, accountant, among othe...

Having loved dinosaurs (who didn't?), imagined myself as an Indiana Jones of old bones, and strolling wide-eyed through various natural museums soaking in the fossilized remains of prehistoric giants, I was delighted when I received this book to read.  I simply thought it would be a academic type account of the finding of some rare bones in a overlooked corner of Oklahoma in the middle 1980's.   Appearances, and assumptions, can be mistaken.   The book is a complex, riveting, and rollar coaster ride through a vicious tug-of-war between corporate greed, individual capitalist endeavor, and academic snobbery. Author Russell Ferrell has uncovered a "Peyton Place" of real palentogological history! Coming in at just over 400 pages, The Bone War of McCurtain County by Russell Ferrell (Rabelius Publishing, Waxahachie, Texas, 2013) , is a story of a "Backwoods Hillbilly and Choctaw Indian" as they battle for "treasure, truth and justice."    It the cla...