Finally, "The Life and Times of Ray Hicks, Keeper of the Jack Tales" will make it to bookstores and Amazon between August 20 and September 1. Two reviewers have declared it the Appalachian Angela's Ashes. When measured by angst, struggle and "being up again it," I can see that the story has a full degree of amazement. Many readers will feel empathy for the family that struggled against nature and will feel joy for their survival.

Friends say, "Well, it's about time," because they know the book has been about seven years in the making. The University of Tennessee Press has done a stellar job on the design and editing. What a story it is! Ray Hicks, known as the last living traditional Jack tale teller in North America, lived his life within the stories passed down through generations of ancestors who settled in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the latter decades of the 1700s. No one knows whether the Hicks, Harmons, or Wards originated the stories, because the tales are older than the United States. They came to the far western area of the North Carolina mountains before the state of North Carolina adapted the full land mass that is the state (today). In fact, when the family or families started passing around the tales, they were living in Indian country, that part of the frontier set aside for those who were first on the land.  Never the less, the Smithsonian attributes the old families who lived on Old Beech Mountain with bringing the Jack tales forth in an unbroken line of succession to the present day. That doesn't mean that they were the only settlers to talk about the same Jack that climbed the bean stalk. For by the 1930s the stories about Jack and his brothers Will and Tom were scattered throughout the mountains into Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. It is just that the family patriarch, Council Harmon is known to have told the tales all his life and recalled hearing them all during his childhood. Since he lived to be over 90 years of age and had 20 children. Ted Hicks still lives on Old Beech Mountain today on the same land as his father, Ray, his Grandfather Nathan, his Great Grandfather Ben, and his Great-Great Grandfather Samuel, III (who married Council Harmon's daughter Becky). That  means the family lore has survived in the same place for over 200 years.

Ray was a popular storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival for nearly three decades. He was the first to entertain school children for Jimmy Neil Smith, founded of the national storytelling movement. Ray drew a crowd year after year, for his speech as much as for his ancient stories. He loved the audiences and they loved him. Therefore, this book is a biography that reads more like a memoir. It is told in Ray's voice, in the way that I remember from the hundreds of hours I spent on his front porch, his livingroom, and his kitchen.

Born in 1922, Ray lived his entire life in the Appalachian Mountains and knew mountain ways. He was a walking encyclopedia of lore, nature, and tradition. He passed his knowledge along to his children, his family, and everyone who took the time to make the trip to 4,200 feet to sit on his porch or in his front room and listen to the master storyteller.

It is easy to say that Ray lived within the family stories. He eventually became the Jack in the Jack tales. His Jack took on the same history or living the old way by the sun, the same that Ray did. Jack walked the same narrow paths and farmed with his family, the same way Ray did.

So the book is a tribute to the man who helped preserve the art of storytelling for generations to come. And at the same time, it is the story of Ray and of Jack and how they came to be the same.

To place an advanced order contact the University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN and order online at UTPress.org. Use ISBN 978-1-57233-621-6 when ordering from a bookseller or online. Final title: The Life and Times of Ray Hicks: Keeper of the Jack Tales by Lynn Salsi.