Jon Bunn

Shoals Bluff

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In a backwater place, in an almost-forgotten time, nestled in obscurity and barely one generation removed from the failures and remembrances of the Civil War, the descendants of that conflict have settled back into the wallows as dirt farmers, many destined to love and repeat the habits and mistakes of their kin. Re-baptized with the dust and silt of bottom land farming, the Chandlers family'[s perspective of life is of gazing on a grey horizon. This outlook is temporarily brightened by the birth of a son in 1900, with two more hands to toil the unending labor of their marginally productive land in Southern Indiana. Can that brightness of spirit grow and renew? A simple faith of constant and enduring belief through helping others emerges and binds those farmers together with a common cause to persevere. Thus, begins a journey filled with wins and losses, truth and lies, theft and murder, charity, and redemption.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Mayhaw Press
• Seitenzahl: 366
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. Dezember 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 203mm x 127mm x 22mm
• Gewicht: 440g
• ISBN-13: 9780578803982
• ISBN-10: 0578803984
• Artikelnr.: 60743178

Autorenporträt

Living in a violent and dysfunctional alcoholic family forced the author to confront ultimatums that pushed him to leave behind a Texas home at 15 and seek sanity and opportunity elsewhere, without much of an education and no money. As a kid Jon Bunn grew up in and around honkytonks from his pre-teen years and had little chance of finding a bright future, a mentor, or a pathway forward as a high school dropout. Then came Indiana and a distant family that took him in and told him he had worth, something few others had ever said to him. Jon re-entered high school with nominal paperwork for the Registrar. The only work he had done before leaving Texas was hand sanding cars at an auto body shop, helping a welder build highway billboards, and cooking on a seismic exploration ship in the Gulf of Mexico when he was 14. He never dreamed he would complete high school and was told he would only make it by working with his hands and his back. On a dare, he applied to Indiana University and was accepted. Financial aid was his friend. Finally, he could do what he wanted to do with no one to tell him "No." In hard times, which were frequent, he had high school friends who provided the food that kept him going. He wore clothes he found in restaurant's lost and found. He did a lot of jobs to pay for his college and learned that education would be his ticket to a future. Though steered by counselors towards vocational classes, he went on to graduate from Indiana University with a B.S. in Speech and Theatre and a minor in Folklore, and later earned an M.S. in Secondary Education. After many touches and goes after college, Jon became inspired to teach in unconventional settings and to encourage others who may not have seen a pathway forward. Jon first taught 6th graders in a gifted and talented school at the city zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and taught skydiving on weekends. He worked in public and private schools as a teacher, administrator, and with disruptive youth in restricted environments. In the 1970's he taught adult education at Vincennes University in rural settings throughout southern Indiana-high school cafeterias, community centers, church basements, and county jails-and lived on a farm within the Amish community. Jon's work experiences along the way have been wide and varied-welder, machinist, carpenter, busboy, waiter, cook, dishwasher, assembly line worker, recording technician, actor, stagehand, bartender, artist, musician, teacher, recruiter, glass blower-and now, writer. He feels strongly that an education is a wonderful thing to have that no one can take from you. He says, "It is your gift to yourself, from yourself, for yourself. Some people are called to teach others and some gifts are those people who teach us all."