White Pilgrim from Sumac Ridge

An authentic page-turning novel whose main character is a white boy spawned by the rural bi-racial society of south Mississippi during the turbulent mid-twentieth century. We meet him in 1948 when he is eleven years old and already deeply committed within the separate white and black subcultures. Torn between the two, he advances through a series of life-altering experiences. He goes off to college and returns after a twenty-year exile to find the place of his roots changed beyond recognition and with that the destruction of his dreams and his faith in a distant impersonal government. Challenge and adventure, triumph and tragedy, race and violence, promise and betrayal, love and heartbreak ? the book has it all. A rich source of social commentary, history, and geography for anyone who loves a good story. From beginning to end, a thrilling adventure by the award-winning author who was there.

Son of the rural Pine Hills of south Mississippi, the author graduated from West Point and earned a Ph.D. at Syracuse University. A human geographer and former army colonel, he has published in books, popular magazines, newspapers, and professional journals. The wide-ranging subjects of his published work include the social geography of Mississippi?s bi-racial society, ethnic patterns in New York villages, mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, Ecuador?s Colorado Indians, snow capped volcanic mountains of South America, the life of Moritz Thomsen, fishermen off the coast of Ecuador, challenges and triumphs of a distance runner, and more. He divides his time between southern California and Kentucky, where he lives and works.