·        Jack Justin Turner, Ph.D.-has roots deep in the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky.  His father, V.O. Turner, his great grandfather, Jobe Turner, and his grandfather, Jack Turner, are buried in the Turner family cemetery on Turner's Branch, five miles west of the tiny village of Maytown, in Floyd County, Kentucky, where Dr. Turner was born.  Justin and and his wife, Judy, both attended grade school and high school in Maytown, where Justin was a star basketball player and Judy was a cheerleader.  Both spend more than a few weeks there each year and maintain an active relationship with the many members of the extended Turner and Gibson families.  Dr. Turner is a graduate of Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky.  He was a professor of International Relations at Middle Tennessee University in Murfressboro, Tennessee, and was honored as Professor Emeritus at MTSU, where he has since retired.  When Justin and his wife Judy Gibson Turner are in Maytown, they stay on a hill farm that has been in the Turner family since 1858.  The farm has natural gas, two kinds of coal, a creek, a pond, a spring, and an abundance of grapes, apples, bluebirds, deer, and two kinds of Wild Turkey.  It is even rumored that the farm may have its very own bear... Judy Gibson Turner, the author's wife, is also a native of Maytown, Floyd County, Kentucky.  Until her recent retirement, she was a sixth grade teacher in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Her Kentucky Mountain roots are deep and she shares the passion and the love that Justin has for Eastern Kentucky.  She and Justin met during their years at Maytown High School.  Judy was a cheerleader for the Maytown Wildcats basketball team and Justin was a star player for the Wildcats.  Dr. Turner's father, V.O. Turner was a widely-known storyteller and an educator of considerable reputation and merit.  Virginia Casey Turner, Justin's mother, was a highly acclaimed and published poet.  In 1972, Pikeville College published a book of her poems entitled Cat Claws and Treebark. Virgil O. Turner was a talented story-teller, a high school principal, a lawyer, a security guard for Cadillac (during World War II), a Floyd County, Kentucky, Superintendent of Schools, and a Professor and Assistant Dean at Pikeville College in Pikeville, Kentucky.  Justin's dad had a B.A. from Berea College, an M.A. from the University of Kentucky, was on the law review at Duke University in North Carolina, and took an L.L.D from the University of Kentucky in 1938.  While at Berea College, V.O. Turner was a track star and President of the B Club.  He was twice second in the State college track all around.  He came back to the mountains of Eastern Kentucky with the commitment to improving life there, and he had a very major impact on education, not only in the mountains of Kentucky, but in Kentucky generally.  V.O. Turner helped to write the precedent breaking Minimum Foundation Program, testified repeatedly on educational issues before the Congress of the United States, and served as President of the Eastern Kentucky Education Association, among many other significant accomplishments. Operating with severely limited funds, V.O. Turner consolidated many of the rural schools in Floyd County, Kentucky, built a new high school in Prestonsburg, and dealt successfully with the challenges presented by segregation.  While at Pikeville College, he instituted a host of programs that were imitated by other colleges, including a legal internship program.  He won a long list of awards for his teaching at Pikeville and was much revered by his students for championing the mountain people.  He passed away in 1997.  Dr. Turner is the author two books -- The Sheriffs' Murder Cases and The Foxes and The Hounds, both of which have been highly acclaimed.  THE FOXES AND THE HOUNDS Volume One - Big Medicine River Days A Review by Fred Stone, New Author Book Reviews  The Foxes and the Hounds, Jack Justin Turner’s masterpiece, is arguably the most powerful and gripping historical novel one is ever likely to read. Begin with "Big Medicine River Days," the first volume in the trilogy, and you will experience life in the "real" Kentucky Mountains during a time of wild steamboat rides, family honor, mountain feuds, flatland prostitution, greedy and prejudiced "Outsiders," and the lust for untold riches buried in the hills, riches that become both the beauty and the burden of the hill country. But this superbly crafted novel is above all - as the author himself proclaims - "an enduring love story.  Dr. Turner, a native of Maytown, Kentucky, has woven a story of two young men, very competitive friends, and the paths they take. Both travel to the Outside to college, where they learn to thrive despite stereotypical images the Outsiders have and hold against them. Adrian Gault and Lawton Herald briefly go their separate ways after college, as Adrian teaches school and Lawton becomes a lawyer.  Adrian and Lawton each falls in love with a beautiful and resourceful woman, and soon the two men are back together, attempting to acquire mineral rights in their beloved mountains. They team with Copper John Castle, a hotel owner, and Rooster Clabe Osborne, a colorful and feared feudist, in an attempt to beat the Northern robber barons to the rights to mine and transport coal.  This reviewer once attended a seminar on Appalachian writing where the late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist John Ed Pearce stated that enough had been written about the mountains of Southeastern Kentucky, and it was time to concentrate on other areas. Not only was he mistaken, but it’s a darn shame that Mr. Pearce did not live long enough to read The Foxes and the Hounds, Dr. Turner’s epic and accurate rendering of life in the Kentucky Mountains and the area’s indelible influence on the state and the nation.  The Sheriffs' Murder Cases Volume One - The Cumberland Mountain Trilogy  The Sheriffs' Murder Cases is the initial volume in The Cumberland Mountain Trilogy, a series of novels high-lighting life in the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky during the early and middle decades of the 20th Century.  Jacob Newton Herald, High Sheriff or Deputy Sheriff of Chinoe County from 1920-1945, is the trilogy's central character, and the accounts are in his own words, or as nearly so his granddaughter Jennifer could copy down.  Jake, as he was commonly known to friend and foe alike, received a B.A. Degree from Valparaiso University outside Chicago in 1914.  He subsequently applied and was admitted to medical school at the University of Louisville.  He left that school with a year remaining, while  still in good standing, in order to fight in the Great War.  He emerged from that war a heavily decorated soldier with the battlefield rank of Captain.  He returned to his home county of Chinoe in the Kentucky mountains, in 1920, where he became involved in law enforcement as either Sheriff or Sheriff Deputy (the Sheriff being unable to succeed himself) for a quarter century.   In the Sheriffs' Murder Cases, Jake takes the County Sheriffs' job for a shockingly immoral purpose and ends up trying to solve a series of puzzling murders.  Other volumes in the Cumberland Mountain Trilogy to come are The Sheriff of Frozen's Murder Cases and The Sheriff of Hell's Murder Cases.   Talking about the language used in The Cumberland Mountain Trilogy, the author portrays Sheriff Jacob Newton Herald using authentic vernacular.  Herald's choice of words and general mode of communication does not correspond with that commonly accredited to Appalachian natives.  Consideration was given by the author to altering the English usage by substituting simpler terms and by changing the word order.  That consideration was abandoned after Sheriff Herald offered strong objection.  He suggested that we go into Chinoe County and listen to how the natives talk "nowadays."  None would agree to go, so the author simply decided to proceed with Herald's stories in the way his granddaughter recorded them. There is still this question of language veracity:  we understand that Herald has been accused of an obsessive distrust and dislike of "outsiders" -- and particularly those of the coal camp variety and that there are other versions of the events Herald describes.  Anyone wishing to challenge Herald's interpretations should take these matters up with him.  The publisher disclaims any responsibility.