Shady Grove

About the Book

Among the intriguing personalities that made life interesting for Will and Julie Summers in Shady Grove, a sleepy little town in Southeast Missouri where Will had been hired as an administrator during the Great Depression, were John Davis, the town’s prowling eccentric; Mozella Lewis, a glamorous black teacher and her worthless white boyfriend, Harry Hussy; Marshall Ed Hooks and Father Hank Jolliak, alcoholics, one lovable, one not; dignified Rev. Harry Morton, the passionate black pastor of Zion Hill Baptist Church; ambitious William Jones, cocky prosecutor who officiously presided over two public hangings; Maggie Stanley, a buxom, overweight mother who brawled with her teacher niece, Emily Wickam, in Will’s office; Lola Taylor, New York star of stage and screen, who brought culture and heartbreak to Shady Grove; the poker crowd at Elmer Guyton’s hardware store; and the gossipy know-it-ails of scandal at Charley Bell’s barbershop. These and others made life anything but dull for Will and Julia in Shady Grove, Missouri.

About the Author

George G. Suggs, Jr. is a native of North Carolina and a retired professor of history. He was educated at Wake Forest University and the University of Colorado-Boulder (BA ‘55, MA ‘57, PhD ‘64). In 1959-60, he received a John Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities for post-graduate study at Northwestern University, and in 1980-81 he received a NEH Resident Fellowship for post-doctoral study at Brown University. He is the author of six non-fiction books, numerous articles and book reviews. The Moonshiner and Other Stories is his second work of fiction.