Book excerpt: My book, Soul of the South, includes thirty short stories ranging from general fiction; military, everyday drama, to children’s stories some of which use animal characters. My premier story ‘The Pecan Tree’ is a fictionalized account of a soldier in General Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson’s army returning home from the Battle of New Orleans through west Tennessee in 1815. There has stood a huge pecan tree in Natchez Trace State Park for many years supposedly planted by a soldier of the returning army. It was reputed to be the largest and oldest pecan tree in America. Sadly, a few years ago one of our many tornadoes destroyed it. There is another story I read as a boy that stated a sixteen year old volunteer with the militia Jackson headed in his many Indian wars refused his sergeants order to pick up biscuit crumbs that he had thrown on the ground in front of his tent. Because of the soldier’s refusal Old Hickory had him shot for insubordination. Using these two events I have woven a story of a ghost that made his presence known at various times during the years following the army’s trek through the forest that became Henderson County, Tennessee. The story basically follows the Beacum family that settled the land where the boy was buried with a pecan in his pocket that grew into the large tree. The family settled there during the 1830’s and the last surviving member died in the 1930’s. The family farm is offered for back taxes and is purchased by a young teacher who has a wife and son. The ghost continues his visits and only after the teacher enlists in the army and survives a Japanese prison camp does the story come to an end when he returns home. There is a story of Billy the Kid who surfaces on a farm in west Tennessee when he is an old man and adds a fictional account of how his death and burial were staged by the man who, history says killed him; sheriff Pat Garrett. I try to include a moral in each of the children’s stories as well as making them interesting.