{"product_id":"9780809313655","title":"Out of the Ozarks","description":"\u003cp\u003eWilliam Childress has roamed the Ozarks of Missouri, Illinois, and Arkansas for 13 years. His training as a poet—he has published three books of poems—helps him create splendor and grace in a description of a sunset or shape the mood of a rainy autumn day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough striking word-pictures of his life, you will meet Chilly’s irascible, lovable stepfather, his three sons, and long-dead members of his family whose lives or deeds touched him and were chronicled. And you will laugh with his neighbors and friends, whose humor helps them through life in a county that has been called “one of the poorest in America.” They are not all saints, nor are the Ozarks heaven—just “paradise with the gate left off.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor more than a dozen years, William Childress has written of southwestern Missouri in magazines like \u003ci\u003eReader’s Digest, Sports Afield, McCalls, Country \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eRoads\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eFriends \u003c\/i\u003e(the Chevrolet magazine that has carried his national column since 1979). But his millions of readers know him best through his thrice-weekly column in the \u003ci\u003eSt\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eLouis\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e Post-Dispatch, \u003c\/i\u003etwice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and through his frequent personal appearances, where he sometimes sings his own songs and plays a mandolin, harmonica, and 12-string guitar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Southern Illinois University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031081238768,"sku":"9780809313655","price":13.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780809313655","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}