Background
Williams, Philip Lee was born on January 30, 1950 in Athens, Georgia, United States. Son of Marshall Woodson and Ruth Sisk Williams.
( Set in a city as lively and absorbing as the novel's wr...)
Set in a city as lively and absorbing as the novel's writing, The True and Authentic History of Jenny Dorset is a comic historical epic with a memorable heroine. The novel, while parodying the style of eighteenth-century novelists such as Henry Fielding and William Thackeray, charts the growth of the beautiful Jenny Dorset as she matures from a headstrong child into a tenacious freedom fighter and leader of the Daughters of Liberty as the Revolutionary War approaches. Henry Hawthorne, an astute and witty family servant, narrates this adventure that follows the rise of and humorous feud between two eccentric low-country plantation families. The True and Authentic History of Jenny Dorset is an exciting and often hilarious novel that is entertaining reading for anyone who loves a good adventure and alluring characters.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820323349/?tag=2022091-20
( I am a country man, raised in the fields and woods of n...)
I am a country man, raised in the fields and woods of north-central Georgia. I do not care for cities, and so I live in the forest on a ridge over Wildcat Creek, a bold stream that flows, half a mile away, into the Oconee River. . . . Our house is halfway down the ridge, just before it plummets sharply to the creek. I have found archaic chert scrapers on our property, more recent potsherds with intricate decorations. I say that we own these seven acres, but we’re really just passing through. With his opening lines Philip Lee Williams defines the territory of this intricate and lyrical memoir: life with his young family on the ridge, his coming of age, and the legacy of his southern family. That legacy, which includes a love of literature, a passion for music, and an insatiable curiosity about the natural world, also includes a defective heart valve. Crossing Wildcat Ridge combines the drama of Williams’s open-heart surgery with contemplative essays on the natural world. The gentle counterpoint between the two elements illuminates both in remarkable and profound ways. Confronting his mortality, the author struggles to determine his place in the world. His sober consideration of things left undone is juxtaposed with the contemplation of a mound of fire ants: There is no uncertainty in that world; each knows his job, doesn’t know why, can’t ask. None knows he will die.” As the author slips into depression during his postoperative recovery, he studies the flora and fauna of the ridge, its lights and shadows, the dunes beneath the waters of the creek. With poetic imagery, he shares not only his crystalline observations of nature but also their healing effects--how he learns to receive the gift of a mockingbird’s song, how the tracks of elusive woodland creatures bolster his faith in the existence of things we cannot see, how sensory memories reconnect him to the boy he was and the man he hopes to be. All thinking, feeling adults search for the right path to self-discovery. Philip Lee Williams’s luminous account of his journey is one satisfying and effective road map.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820320900/?tag=2022091-20
( Retired professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his fa...)
Retired professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his family home on a lake in central Georgia to die. And yet he has never felt so alive, so ready to learn about the natural world around him. Having taught all his life, he is ready for solitude. But a young country boy, Willie Sullivan, disrupts Lachlan’s search for order and rekindles memories he thought long dead. Lachlan also finds Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier, and they soon begin to see in each other reflections of the lives they once led. Lachlan’s journal of his year by the lake leads him to a deeper understanding of himself and the world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820327905/?tag=2022091-20
(ALL THE WESTERN STARS is a memorable story, filled with u...)
ALL THE WESTERN STARS is a memorable story, filled with universal fears and truths. A story of two men chasing a hurrying sundown. Jake Baker, a seventy-three-year-old former construction worker who walked the high steel, suddenly finds himself ill and relegated to an old folks' home by his insensitive niece. There he regains his health and meets Lucas Kraft, the shell of a famous novelist, a former National Book Award winner who is searching for the remnants of his talent and his life. Two men from vastly different backgrounds with a commonbond-they're both on the run. Running from their pasts, from their mortality, from the fear of dying unfulfilled. Jake and Lucas break out of the nursing home and head west. Like children, they want to be cowboys; like old men, they want to experience life, raw and thrilling, once more while they can. Lucas wants to find a range ware where he can prove his manhood: "I will become part of legend, and they will write songs about me, how I rode in from the East and became one of them so fast, how I helped rid them of the civil robber barons from town." Jake wants proof that he's still emotionally alive, and he finds it in the comforting arms of Betty Silver, a good-natured, foul-mouthed woman who is searching for her estranged daughter. As broad as the western sky. As warm as a Texas summer night. ALL THE WESTERN STARS, the beguiling second novel from Philip Lee Williams, will hold you as surely as barbed wire, as gently as a hug.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/093460147X/?tag=2022091-20
(In the heart of Kentucky cave country, Blue Crystal Cave ...)
In the heart of Kentucky cave country, Blue Crystal Cave owner Sam Preston and his love, Mary Beth, are held hostage by an ex-convict. By the author of The Heart of a Distant Forest. 35,000 first printing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802114997/?tag=2022091-20
(At the heart of Final Heat is the story of two people who...)
At the heart of Final Heat is the story of two people who share a common rage so intense it ignites everything that come in their paths. Williams has written a novel of dark eccentricity, of funny and awful truths, of coiled tensions that seem to grow... a landscape that refuses to fade long after the tale is told.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001N8FZ26/?tag=2022091-20
( A young Confederate sharpshooter, Charlie Merrill, has ...)
A young Confederate sharpshooter, Charlie Merrill, has already suffered many losses in his life, but he must find a way to endure—and to grow—if he is to survive the battles he and his fellow soldiers face in July 1864 at the gates of Atlanta. From the opening salvos on Rocky Face Ridge in northwest Georgia through the trials of Resaca and Kennesaw Mountain, Charlie faces the overwhelming force of the Union army and a growing uncertainty about his place in the war. Framed by a story that finds the elderly Charlie giving a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Atlanta, A Distant Flame portrays love, violence, and regret about wrong paths taken. With an attention to historical detail that brings the past powerfully to the present, Philip Lee Williams reveals Charlie’s journey of redemption from the Civil War’s fields of fire to the slow steps of old age.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0820337862/?tag=2022091-20
(In the tradition of his award-winning novel THE HEART OF ...)
In the tradition of his award-winning novel THE HEART OF A DISTANT FOREST Philip Lee Williams gives us another lyrical and compassionate tale, and his most fascinating protagonist to date. THE SONG OF DANIEL is a story of innocence, of a young man who has pushed away his darkest memories to live a simple life as a groundkeeper in a cemetery. Daniel exults in his world in a few close friends at the trailer park, where he lives and with his beloved dog Toggle. Daniel's world is changed when he meets Rebecca Gentry, an English professor at a university near the cemetery. Rebecca and Daniel are both transformed when they meet, each bringing gifts of joy and sorrow to their days. But a shattering experience form years' past comes back into Daniel's life, threatening both his new love and his happiness. Finally, in a complex clash of innocence and experience Daniel's childlike life becomes clear and Rebecca discovers a long hidden part of herself-and the key to the poet who so fascinated and eluded her. This is a story about homeplace, about love and loss of family, about an innocent man's journey toward experience. Williams, a masterful storyteller, has once again written a beautiful and deeply moving novel.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0934601755/?tag=2022091-20
Williams, Philip Lee was born on January 30, 1950 in Athens, Georgia, United States. Son of Marshall Woodson and Ruth Sisk Williams.
Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, University Georgia, 1972.
Editor Clayton (Georgia) Tribune, 1972, Athens Observer, 1978-1985. Copy editor Madisonian, Madison, Georgia, 1973-1978. Science writer University Georgia, Athens, 1985-1992, director public information, since 1997, assistant dean for public information, since 2006.
Editor, founder poetry magazine Ataraxia, 1974-1977. Adjunct professor creative writing University Georgia, Athens, 2002-2006.
( A young Confederate sharpshooter, Charlie Merrill, has ...)
(In the tradition of his award-winning novel THE HEART OF ...)
( Set in a city as lively and absorbing as the novel's wr...)
(At the heart of Final Heat is the story of two people who...)
(In the heart of Kentucky cave country, Blue Crystal Cave ...)
( Retired professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his fa...)
(ALL THE WESTERN STARS is a memorable story, filled with u...)
( I am a country man, raised in the fields and woods of n...)
(A story of Christmas stories in the small town, 1950s South)
Married Linda Rowley, September 30, 1972. Children: Brandon, Megan.