Unexpected Inheritance

Mick Jagger was right. "You can't always get what you want...

...Especially not from preceding generations of your own family. And you can't always control the lessons or traits you pass on to your descendants, either.

This hard truth lies at the heart of author Stephen M. Vest's nostalgic collection of family tales. Through a series of real-life vignettes exploring the relationships within his own feisty, fascinating family, Vest uncovers the many values, traits, and life lessons — often unexpected — that he inherited from his older parents, domineering grandmother, and other colorful characters who influenced his life.

Vest's stories will strike a chord of warm familiarity with readers who will recognize a little bit of their own families, and maybe a little bit of themselves, on each page. They also affirm that the rest of Mick Jagger's line is also true, especially when it comes to family:

"If you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

Stephen M. Vest is the editor, publisher and founder of Kentucky Monthly magazine, which won the Governor's Award in the Arts (Media) in 2005. Vest, along with long-time journalist Michael Embry, founded Kentucky Monthly in 1998 and today it has a circulation of more than 40,000, with readers in every state and numerous foreign countries.

Steve is the author of two collections of his columns and the publisher of the anthology Kentucky's Twelve Days of Christmas. A native Kentuckian, Vest holds degrees from the University of Louisville (1986) and Murray State University (MFA in Creative Nonfiction, 2011). His work has appeared in literary journals such as Northern Kentucky University's Journal of Kentucky Studies, Still, The Single Hound (and others), as well as in the anthology, Of Woods and Waters: An Outdoor Reader.

Steve was a contributor to The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky. He is also the editor of SAR Magazine, the membership publication of the National Society, Sons of the American Revolution, which is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Prior to starting Kentucky Monthly, Vest was the news editor of The Blood-Horse, an international Thoroughbred racing magazine based in Lexington, Kentucky. Before that, he spent more than a dozen years in newspapers, mostly in sports, including award-winning stints at the Frankfort State Journal, the Recorder Newspapers of Northern Kentucky and the McLean County News.

Vest and his wife, Kay, reside in Frankfort with the youngest of their four delightful children.