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G O D
’ S O D D L I N G
McGraw-Hill., New York City New York, 1960.
267 pp.
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Jesse Stuart’s father, Mitchell “Mick”
Stuart died shortly after Stuart
returned home to W-Hollow to recuperate
from his heart attack. Stuart was so ill
that he couldn’t attend the funeral
of his father. Stuart often used
his father as a character in his fiction
without naming him, so he wrote
God’s Oddling: The Story of Mick Stuart
My Father as moving tribute to his
father. The title is taken from Mick’s
habit of calling his oldest son, Oddling.
He thought Jesse was odd, because he
didn’t drink or smoke, and he went away
from home to attend school and to write.
Just before his father died, it came to
Stuart that his father was really God’s “oddling”—
hence the book’s title. Selections
from the book were published in
The Strength From the Hills 1968.
Carl Leiden was a professor of political
science and government from Iowa that
Stuart met while teaching in Egypt in
1960-1961. The two men became fast
friends: “Indeed, hardly a day passed
that the two colleagues did not see each
other, and get together to do something
or to talk at length” (Richardson,
Jesse, 395). |
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