Rancher, writer and retired English professor, Dr. Jim Hoy has a new book about life on the great plains. Hoy is also a board member of the Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. He is also a retired English professor at Emporia State who grew up in a ranching family near the Flint Hills town of Cassoday. He is still involved in ranching. As Rex Buchanan points out, “Jim knows Chaucer AND cattle.” The book is called Gathering Strays: Stories from Kansas and the Southwestern Plains and is available from the University Press of Kansas.
Rex Buchanan, commentator for Kansas Public Radio (and KOHP interviewer) recently reviewed Hoy’s book on KPR. Buchanan says in his review of the book, “Jim’s article about Home on the Range, the Kansas state song, is enlightening and evocative. He calls Home on the Range “the most melodious, most poetic, most well-known state song” in the country. He is obviously, unabashedly in love with this place and its culture, writing with the careful, practiced eye of somebody who has covered a lot of territory and has stories to tell. Just like a cowboy, maybe.
Rex Buchanan’s closing commentary: “If you’ve spent much time in Kansas, this book will increase your appreciation for the state’s people and their history. And if you’re new to Kansas…you’ll get a first-class introduction to this place we call home. There’s no place like it.”
