LeRoy Tucker, Climax I: Cotton on the Rocks Press Release

Press Release

Climax I: Cotton on the Rocks

LeRoy Tucker

Mr. LeRoy Tucker sent me the following press release for Climax I: Cotton on the Rocks, so I suppose his book is now officially available. Readers of this blog might be able to click on that image above to enlarge for readability, but I've reproduced a slightly edited version of the document below for easiest convenience:

Lives Unfold In Climax

New book presents a collection of stories that capture the flavor of earlier times and events that happened in a small southern town over a period of thirty years.

Xlibris, the print-on-demand self publishing services provider, announced today the release of Climax I: Cotton on the Rocks. Authored by L. "Tuck" Tucker, this book presents thirteen short stories all connected and all reflect unusual circumstances including incest, murder, humor and more all occurring in the remote village of Climax, Arkansas over a period of thirty years.

Climax I Cotton on the Rocks, presents thirteen short stories and a mixed lot of twenty pieces of hill lore including hill humor, pathos, joy and sorrow, gardening and hunting the old way.

It opens with "The Farrar Incident" in which Sheriff Alfred "Bulldog" Martin is challenged as he deals with the knotty problems resulting from a murder that disturbed the community and tries the sheriff's ethics as never before.

This work is united along one theme, the community of Climax, Arkansas, a community of poor hardscrabble people joined together in common, making a living from the poor rocky and gravely soil of the fictional La Clair County. Inevitably there arise combinations of circumstances resulting in stories that are sometimes funny, sometimes strange, and stories that are merely humorous, like "The Electric Chicken," and stories that have it all including mystery, like "Hoops." Even one story about an overzealous preacher and self mutilation and a poignant little love story, "Cadillac Pie" that will stir the hardest of hearts.

With just the right blend of mystery, humor, adventure and wit, Climax I: Cotton on the Rocks captivate and shock readers with the raw earthiness, with the wit and with its variety and surprises with every turn of the page. For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to Xlibris.

About the Author

L. "Tuck" Tucker was born Jan 7 1931 in Fulton County, Arkansas, hill country where the great depression lasted on into the early fifties. He started grade school at age five in California's central valley, "a grapes of wrath experience," he jokingly explains. Later, he attended school in Texas where he delivered the Texarkana Gazette and The Dallas Morning News. At the war's end, the family returned to the hills, where Tuck finished high school and was soon married to his high school sweetheart Patsy Sutherland.

Tuck says, "I really never gave college a thought." He was employed by GM two times as an hourly employee. After ten years service, he entered management and completed thirty years of service and retired in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where he managed a Parts Distribution Center. "I write for fun," he laughs, "never learned grammar. Like a country picker, I do it by ear." Humor comes naturally to Tuck. "I have achieved more failures than most men have held jobs," he claims.

He is a former marine, drafted in 1952 and was inducted in Little Rock along with seven other draftees and one volunteer and marine regular, a youngster named Charles Portis who was the man in charge during the boozy three-day train ride to the marine base in San Diego and who later wrote the great classic True Grit and other fine novels.

Tuck now lives in Jonesboro, Arkansas with his wife of sixty-one years. They have three daughters and many grandchildren.

That "sixty-one years" refers to the length of LeRoy's happy and successful marriage to his charming, lovely, and intelligent wife Patsy, whom I met last summer when the two of them visited me in Salem, Arkansas during my return to the Ozarks for a few weeks in August.

Anyway, I strongly recommend Tucker's book. You can find a bit more information online here, a slightly different version of this press release. Or you can order here.

For those who need the proof of the pudding, I've offered a preview from the story "Rolland Burdick" here.