A passion for learning and love for her childhood church, local history, and people, led Joyce Milford Hutchins to research, transcribe, and record this history of Hightower Baptist Church. She is the daughter of devoted Hightower members Robert and Cleo Milford, who were the inspiration for her dedication in researching and writing this collection, her first book. A Cherokee County native, she is a graduate of Young Harris College, The Universities of Georgia, West Georgia and Alabama. She has used her studies for teaching health and physical education in the Cherokee County School District (retired), as well as life lessons in being a devoted wife, mother, grandmother to her family and a friend and neighbor to all whom she has come in contact. Joyce currently resides with her husband in Kennesaw, Georgia and enjoys sports, playing music, reading, and planning for life’s adventures to come.
From the farms and pastures of the north Georgia mountains, where pine trees grow in the brick red clay, the tradition of storytelling is alive and well. As rustic as a barbed wire fence, as homey as a light in the window, In the Pines is a collection of stories and poems told in the voice of a vanishing people. Funny, poignant, and reminiscent of events and personalities familiar to us all, you will come away feeling that someone in the book reminds you of a person you know. This is not a book about the magnolia and cotillion south, but about the lives of Appalachian people who lived a hardscrabble life at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains. So, take a journey into the lives of the Appalachian people and listen to the characters tell their stories of joys and struggles, and everyday life in the mountains, in the pines.
When Alex's father takes her to their favorite beach she brings a dandelion with her to make a special wish, but upon arrival she sees another little girl who might need the wish much more than she does..
