"I think we fail to recognize sometimes how hard life can be for working class America.   We sit here in these nice, well semi-nice offices, and it’s a nice clean job.  I think too many Americans, particularly in the business management community forget, and maybe its revealed by these TV shows like Undercover Boss, they really don’t realize how hard these people work and how tough it can be.  There is a lack of understanding of how hard it is for some people in 'dirty jobs'."

"Fiction and fly-fishing share a common thread—they are narrative acts. Whether to the reader or to the fish, you’re telling a story. And if you lay the illusion of reality out there on the water in a believable way, and if you’re a little lucky, both reader and fish will bite. Hopefully."

 "Helvetia is a unique and interesting community worthy of having its story told in detail and with accuracy. It was truly a piece of community service for me. Seeing how all these families I knew as a child wove into the tapestry of this little town was fascinating and often nostalgic."

"Writing helps me make sense of the world. When I write about racists or predators, folks who are obsessive-compulsive or Guatemalan refugees, it’s an opportunity to slip into their skin and experience their lives for awhile. Particularly with the unsavory characters, I often wind up with at least a portion of empathy regardless of their actions because I begin to understand what makes them tick."

 "I think getting a story that can be relatively easy to read, as well as a good background and introduction to the history of the region, is always a satisfaction for the historian. It becomes a challenge to meet all those goals - to write something that is readable and easy to understand, as well as appealing to the specialists."

"If I couldn’t be a writer, I would want to be a total derelict- one of those guys you don’t want to see coming, you just want to see gone. I would want to be a wanderer-it wouldn’t be anything that would keep me in one place."

Back in print--a classic work from a West Virginia Poet Laureate! Edited and with an Introduction by A.E. Stringer.

"When I came to the Depression era in my preparations for the course I found few useful sources. I still had my notes from my undergraduate course with Professor Summers, but little else. So, my original purpose was to put together some material for the course and maybe prepare a journal article. Tens years or so later, it turned out to be a book manuscript."

"This book will result in new paradigms of Florida history and will, by its nature, challenge convention and comfort zones. This is not a conventional approach to Florida history; it is a fresh and challenging approach."