Life After Mississippi

From dust jacket notes: "The distinctive southern voice of James A. Autry continues in his second book of verse, Life After Mississippi. As the title indicates, Autry takes us on a personal voyage beyond his Mississippi roots to the corporate world where he currently is president of magazine publishing at The Meredith Corporation. Autry faithfully records the voices he hears, both past and present, amid the joy and pain of living. He is, as Willie Morris writes in his Introduction, 'an observer whose task it is to remind us of those small but important details that add up to a significant understanding.' Throughout Autry's work there is a simple faith in mankind, in the best that people can be. Life After Mississippi makes us stop and listen to a country preacher saving souls, an Air Force ground control operator trying to save a pilot's life, a father trying to understand his son, a young man grappling with the social prejudices of his native land. Yet Autry also knows the deep silences of the wind in the pines, of hot, quiet days in the Mississippi hill country, the sound of one's own breathing. Life After Mississippi is illustrated with photographs taken by another talented member of the Autry family, the author's stepmother, Lola Mae Autry. Her photos also faithfully record a time and place -- rural Mississippi during the 1940s and '50s -- that reflect the truth of Autry's poetry: the plain life of farmers, a close community of neighbors and kin, a tenacious spiritual strength that comes from religious faith, love of the land and its creatures, and an enduring respect for one's fellowman...."