Alva Review-Courier -

While attending Vanderbilt University in the late 1940s, Jesse Hill Ford met fellow student Sally Davis, who was from Humboldt, a small town in the western part of Tennessee. They married in 1951, the year Jesse graduated.

After college, Jesse served in the navy during the Korean War and then worked in public relations. Eventually, the Fords agreed that Jesse should become a fiction writer, and he quit his job to pursue a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Florida.

The Fords then relocated to Sally’s hometown where her family was quite prominent. The couple initially li...