Relates the adventures of an orphan named David who lives with his grandmother in the mountains of Kentucky.

More than anything in the world, Andrew wants freckles. His classmate Nicky has freckles -- they cover his face, his ears, and the whole back of his neck. (Once sitting behind him in class, Andrew counted eighty-six of them, and that was just a start! One day after school, Andrew screws up enough courage to ask Nicky where he got his freckles. And, as luck would have it, who should overhear him but giggling, teasing Sharon (who makes frog faces at everybody!) Sharon offers Andrew her secret freckle juice recipe -- for fifty cents. That's a lot of money to Andrew -- five whole weeks allowance! He spends a sleepless night, torn between his desire for freckles and his reluctance to part with such a substantial sum of money. Finally, the freckles win, and Andrew decides to accept Sharon's offer. After school, Andrew rushes home (with the recipe tucked into his shoe for safekeeping). He carefully begins to mix the strange combination of ingredients -- and immediately runs into some unforeseen problems. How Andrew finally manages to achieve a temporary set of freckles -- and then isn't sure he really wants them -- makes a warm and hilarious story.

This collection of 34 stories by Stuart includes "Youth," the macabre "Sunday Afternoon Hanging" and a tragic tale of adultery and murder, "The Old People." Provides a story-by-story commentary by H. Edward Richardson and a discussion of the origin of many of the stories and some of the characters and incidents on which they are based.

Davy, an orphan, is so happy living with Grandma Beverley on her Kentucky farm that he gives her a most unusual Christmas present.

When young Shan befriends a bull black snake, his Kentucky mountain family decides that perhaps the only good snake isn't a dead snake after all.

"While this is a glimpse of Frankfort's African American community, it has much in common with other Black communities, especially those in the South. Although much in the collection that produced this work - both photographic and oral history - is nostalgic, it ultimately demonstrates that change is constant, producing both negative and positive results."--BOOK JACKET.

J. R. LeMaster and Mary Washington Clarke have here assembled a distinguished collection of essays on the works of Jesse Stuart. A prolific writer, Stuart is at home in many different genres; his poetry, his short stories, his novels, and his autobiographical writings are widely known, and his books for children have enjoyed great popularity. Despite the variety of his work and despite the diversity of the ten essayists' points of view, there emerges from this volume a consistent view of a man whose close contact with the land and the people of his region has produced a distinctive body of writing. H. Edward Richardson offers us a glimpse of Jesse Stuart at home, freely and earnestly discussing his work and relating it to the scenes about him. This essay forms a background for the other contributors' discussions of Stuart's humor, his use of folklore, and his persistent agrarian point of view. This, the first collection of all new critical essays on Stuart's writings, succeeds admirably in what criticism is supposed to do-making more accessible the important work of a significant writer.