Comprised of five little old ladies, homeless men, Prostitutes, Prisoners with a guard, kids from the Projects and the radical fringe of the Seminary we somehow brought hope to a hopeless world.
The great radical Will D. Campbell wrote the preface and he was riding high with his National Book Award finalist, "Brother to a Dragonfly" so his name on the cover sold a lot of copies.
"Salty Saints" was different from most books the Baptists were producing because it focuses on the very poor, how gallant they are and why God loves them so.
It came about by Divine Accident ... or Providence ... depending on your point of view.
My friend Bill Thompson was leaving his job as manager of the Seminary Book Store to work for a small publishing company and he asks if I did any writing.
I'd taken to "journaling" ... jotting down stories, prayers and descriptions of life as I saw it ... living and working in the "Hood" ... fascinated by the dire poverty of the inner city where we lived and the vast wealth of the Seminary I attended.
"Well," I answer Bill, "I've got these notebooks ..."
He asked to see them, advised I put the stories in some kind of order and give him a manuscript.
I did ... he liked it ... Meyer Stone published it and ... that's how I became a writer.
The book has had a fascinating life!
It was republished multiple times ... got incredible reviews nationwide ... made Meyer Stone lots of money ... made me hardly any ... but got me invited to lots of places to talk about the book.
Frank Stanton once stormed into my office with the book demanding to know who wrote it?
"Hmmm, that's my name on the cover," I point out the obvious.
"You couldn't have written this," he forcefully explains. "Look at you!"
I didn't know how to answer.
Sarah pulled the books out the other day, places them in order and starts taking pictures of them so we can have a sale.
One of the things about being a writer is you can end up with lots of copies of your books ... or ... can't find one for the life of you ...depending on how things are going.
For the first time in a decade or so, I picked up "Salty Saints" flip through it and ... the dead are raised ... the smell of the Louisville Stockyard on a hot summer night wafts from the pages ... the indignity of Seminary wrestles with the Holiness of the Gospel ... and an idealistic, completely unrealistic young man is still here somehow.
It's a relic of the past ... the Baptists kicked the Church out of it's Convention ... and virtually everyone in the book are dead ... but for a time anyway ... Holiness happened in a big way and it makes me happy to hold something in my hands to prove that it did.
