Frank Pickle

Frank Pickle was a local author who also substituted at my high school, we became friends. After he moved to Florida I eventually lost contact. He is an excellent author; I have loved his books. This biography is proof that a person doesn't have to allow their family (or lack of) define who they are.

FROM AMAZON: He was just, "A Small Lump of Coal"
A bouncing baby-boy arrived on the Paoli, Indiana scene in1942. He bounced
from household to household and from mother, to grandmother, to aunt, to foster parents and back again until he was fourteen years old.
He bounced back and forth between Paoli and Bedford, Indiana and between Lakeland, Gainesville, and McIntosh, Florida. He never spent 36 consecutive months with any family from his birth to his marriage.
His grandparents claimed to have adopted him and his birth mother refered
to him as, "Her brother," as did his aunts and uncle, but he was never adopted.
He never met his real father. His first stepfather gave him his surname and
nothing else. His second stepfather was physically abusive when he was drinking and he seldom stopped drinking.
His mother birthed eleven children. He was the oldest. Four of his siblings
died before they were two-years-old, She gave five of them away before their fourth birthday. She raised the eleventh child. He knew the location of only one sibling for most of his life.
He quit school when he was sixteen, married when he was seventeen, and had
fathered five children before he was twenty-five.

Any Psychologist will tell you that he was destined to fail. BUT HE DIDN'T!

He is a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. Wherever he worked, he was a valued employee. He served as Parks and Recreations Manager, City Councilman and Mayor of the city where he lived after moving from Indiana to Florida. He owned and operated a successful General Contracting Company and he was actively involved in the organization of two successful churches.
Two major car wrecks, colon cancer, and a debilitating heart attack forced him
to take early retirement, but nothing could stop him from putting the family back
together that his mother and others tore apart. He has located and re-established a sibling relationship with all of his living brothers and sisters.… (plus d'informations)

Frank intended this to be the first of a trilogy, but moved to Florida for his wife's health. The last time I heard from him, he was battling cancer. I loved this and was eagerly waiting for more. Based on his ancestors.

It's in the Blood takes you from a chance meeting along a river named Pearl, through railroad towns, oil boom towns and cotton fields, to a conclusion that will leave you with tears in your eyes and a smile on your face. This look at the lives of George and Etter Pickle will explore a question: If we are predisposed to respond to events, conditions, and circumstances in a particular way, can we consciously alter that predisposition? As these soul-mates make their journey through the early twentieth century, they struggle to find their way from being who they were born to be to becoming who they want to be. They meet every challenge and traverse every barrier without looking back, and they discover along the way that if you live life to the fullest, give as good as you get, and always reach for the gold ring, none of the other stuff really matters.… (plus d'informations)

FROM GOODREADS: In 1848 Oxford, a young Englishman born to privilege and educated in the healing arts decides to abandon the comfortable life of a gentleman physician to England’s elite for a life of adventure and excitement on the American Frontier.

Enticed into the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas by tales of folklore and legend from fellow travelers, he discovers there are some things that they left out. William B. Lake will have to quickly loose his greenhorn status and become a pragmatist and a shootist if he wants to live long enough to enjoy the excitement and adventure he is seeking. On his journey “Into the Burning Mountains” he will become a Lawman, a Diplomat, a Frontier Physician and some say: The manifestation of the Choctaw people’s Fire Spirit. Just to survive the challenges to his life and the very existence of the people he comes to think of as his own he will have to ride harder, shoot faster, plan better and enlist the aid of loved ones, friends and enemies to defeat a despot who seems to have more lives than a cat.

Frank Pickle was born and raised in Arkansas. He has been a Country Singer, a Stage Actor, a Composer and lyricist and the CEO of a Texas Cooperation. His first book “The last Pioneers – ISBN 1-4137-9948-5” is about the people he loves and the many places they went. “Into the Burning Mountains” is about the most unusual mountains in America. He has always been enamored with the rich folklore that whispers from every hill, valley, stream and settlement from the Arkansas River to the Red River and from the Mississippi River to the Kiamichi range of the Ouachita Mountains.
Frank Pickle now lives in Florida with his wife of 57 years and three dogs and a cat that has been with him a few years less than that.
186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 9, 2012… (plus d'informations)