A value-d Holiday Gift for the
youngsters in your life…
THE SEARCH AND THE SECRET
By Dr. James M. Gifford
CEO, The Jesse Stuart Foundation
By Dr. James M. Gifford
CEO, The Jesse Stuart Foundation
How much do today’s young people know about traditional
American values? Don’t you wish they
knew more?
Well,
here’s a chance to read them in on perhaps the most important thing they’ll
ever learn. Via a book that’s both a
great story for teenagers and a ringing reaffirmation of the values that guided
a great people in building a great nation.
I refer to…
AMERICA:
The Search and the Secret, by James N. Sites
Here
is an inspiring story about a young man called Sonny growing up in a Tom
Sawyer-like setting along the Ohio River.
The location: The heartland area where Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia
come together. A 10-year-old refugee
from Depression-devastated Pittsburgh, he discovers here a unique dedication to
such grand values as hard work, strict raisin’, tough schooling,
neighborliness, the “old time religion” and love of family, home and country.
These
values prove a lifelong, indispensable guide for Sonny through the modern moral
wilderness. [As they can for ALL
teenagers, now as then!]
His guiding stars: The Bible, Boy Scout Handbook,
McGuffey’s Fifth Reader and his frayed
American history text with its world-shaking documents on mankind in a free
society.
At
16, Sonny also meets (and falls madly in love with) a very human guiding star –
a beautiful neighbor who urges him to turn aside from commonplace goals and strive
to become a “Four Dimensional Human.”
This is an intensively developed person with knowledge, cultural
awareness, spiritual depth and an abiding concern for others.
The book makes many other sharp points, too:
…Beware of today’s Media/Entertainment Complex with its
incessant emphasis on permissiveness, pornography, perversion and
promiscuity. America could well be
committing cultural suicide.
…Abandoning
children to the modern media message madhouse is like
throwing them to the wolves.
…Unless you develop a strong inner world, you fall easy
victim to the crass outer world, pushed around like a leaf in a hurricane.
…Beware of politicians promising government help. The bigger government gets, the smaller
people become.
During Sonny’s decade-long journey of discovery, he
survives the Great (Ohio River) Flood, hunger and a bout with a rattlesnake,
gets baptized in the river, wrestles with death and prepares for war.
The “secret” in the book’s title? The answer lies right in the title
itself: It’s SEARCHING. Aided by his teachers and neighbors, Sonny finally
comes to realize that as long as one keeps learning and seeking answers to
life’s mysteries…and exploring ways to
grow and develop one’s capabilities and understanding to the utmost…life can become
vital and fulfilling, regardless of age.
About the author: Astute readers may already have concluded that Sonny’s
story is the author’s own. Indeed, this
book is a true autobiographical novel. Also,
the beautiful neighbor Sonny falls in love with (Chapter 11) just happens to be
modeled after the author’s wife, Inger – the heroine of Mr. Sites’ most recent
book,
INGER! A Modern-Day Viking Discovers America (also published by JSF
Books).
The
two books, taken together, provide unique insight into the lives of people who
had their roots in the ebullient 1920s, who survived the hardships of the 1930s
and the dangers of WWII, and who then participated directly in the immense
changes that the postwar period brought to America.
Publisher’s note:
America:
The Search and the Secret is published at $22. but is being offered at
HALF-PRICE, or $11., as a special Holiday Gift for young readers. Please add $6. for handling and shipping, for
a total of $17. Order from the Jesse
Stuart Foundation, 1645 Winchester Avenue, Ashland, KY 41101. Phone: 606/326-1667. Or go to JSF Books.com
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