The Tobacco Cutters and Other Stories of Northeastern Kentucky

Book excerpt: Readers who are themselves authors have said of Sam Bevard’s previous books: “Beginning Again is a fine first collection of stories from a passionate countryman, gathered as he roamed the countryside embraced by the family farm in his beloved northeastern Kentucky” —Ron Ellis, author of Cogan’s Woods, editor of Of Woods and Waters. “The greatest compliment I can pay a writer of fiction is that the fiction reads true, real people in a real world, and Sam Bevard is that writer in Through the Back Gate.... —Garry Barker, author of Kentucky Waltz (winner of 2007 Kentucky Literary Award for Fiction), Publisher of Flemingsburg Gazette. In this third collection of stories ranging from humorous to tragic to the supernatural, Sam Bevard presents an assortment of characters old and new including: Colonel Dale in his last and greatest conflict, intrepid WW II veteran Eli Mattson, determined to live on his own terms, and Peck Rackham, who in a dog finds the inspiration to reclaim a lost part of his life.