James R. Kautz

By the time he retired from a state government agency in 2001, Jim Kautz had covered reams of paper with words.

• A doctoral dissertation on the Book of Job

• Lectures to university classrooms

• Articles for archaeology and social services journals

• Reports to governors, high-level bureaucrats, the US Institute of Medicine, and the US Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Then he decided it was time to write for fun. And to travel in pursuit of words and stories.

His first book, published in 2006, was Footprints Across the South: Bartram’s Trail Revisited, a comparison of the modern southland with the 18th century landscape described by William Bartram.

In the following years, he turned to fiction, publishing Digger in 2015. This novel follows the life and struggles of a Biblical archaeologist who must choose between conservative theology (and loyalty to his fundamentalist employer) and his findings in the soil of Israel.

For Tales from Hadrian’s Wall, Jim combined his love for travel and archaeology with his passion for writing. His son John enthusiastically joined him and they set out to test Jim’s seventy-nine-year-old heart, lungs, legs, and feet on a ten-day walk across England.

“The shift from academic and government writing was a struggle,” says Kautz. “The writer moves from data and statistics to descriptions, analogies, and imagination. Landscapes and emotions become the heart of pages. Phrases must catch the reader’s soul. If I go on with literary writing, I’ll never make it to where I’d like to be.”

Kautz, who over a 40-year career held positions in churches, universities, and government agencies, says the three jobs thrilled him most were teaching college students, excavating archaeological ruins in the Near East, and serving the elders of Louisiana as the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman.

In 2010, he and his wife moved from the Atlanta area to a small town on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. There they have served on the boards of local organizations, have delivered meals-on-wheels, and hike on mountainous forest trails with their rescue dog Tina.