Walton Young

Dr. Walton Young, senior professor of English at Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, GA, teaches creative writing (fiction), American literature survey courses, twentieth-century American literature, Georgia literature, and Southern literature.

His favorite authors are F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. His favorite novel is Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, with Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! a close second.

His short story “To the Breath of the Night Wind” was a winner in the 2005 short story contest sponsored by the Dahlonega Literary Festival.

Dr. Young’s novel, A Gathering of Eagles, was published in 2011 and reprinted in 2013. Set primarily in Kingston in Georgia's Bartow County during Christmas of 1919, it is rooted in time and place. The protagonist is Prescott Freeman, who returns from the battlefields of France in the First World War to the family farm. He finds himself embroiled in another conflict—this one between families—a conflict fueled by greed and revenge. The novel is about family and about the land. It deals with loss and the redemptive power of love.

His second novel, Days of Dust and Heat, was published in 2017. Aboard a passenger car of the Union Pacific, Luke Tisdale, Marcus Stokesbury, and Ezra McPherson travel to Cheyenne. Luke, a medical doctor, seeks to claim the body of his brother, who has been murdered. He also intends to find out who killed him. Marcus, a newspaper reporter from Atlanta, is in pursuit of a story. And the story is Ezra, a man of mystery who once called the West home.

Set during the hot summer of 1888, Days of Dust and Heat depicts the conflict between cattle barons and homesteaders who have come to Wyoming in search of the promised land. Ezra, haunted by a violent past, becomes caught up in the conflict. He faces a choice—either run from the imminent range war or enter the field of battle. He knows that fighting comes with a price, and the price is dust and heat. Days of Dust and Heat is the first book in a trilogy.

The second book in the trilogy is Kinsman of the Gun, scheduled to be published in the spring of 2019. Also set during the summer of 1888 in Cheyenne, the novel follows the stories of the characters introduced in Days of Dust and Heat. Ezra McPherson, the gunfighter who cannot escape the past. Luke Tisdale, the young doctor whose brother has been murdered. Marcus Stokesbury and Eloise Endicott, journalists who are intrigued by the mystery surrounding Ezra. Richard Swearingen, the cattle baron who seeks to establish a kingdom in Wyoming. Andrew Swearingen, the man who has killed but who is now willing to take an extraordinary step to prevent bloodshed. This Western epic is a story of love, greed, betrayal, and sacrifice.

Dr. Young and his wife, Suzanne, live in Sautee-Nacoochee in the northeast Georgia mountains.