Letters from Ocracoke (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781500184322)

A native of a small, secluded, commercial fishing village along North Carolina's southern Outer Banks, J.M. Styron grew up among the docks and boats of his family's commercial seafood business. It was a humble, picturesque upbringing that presented its own unique opportunities and challenges. Raised upon family land, which was part of the original land-grant given by King George II to one of Styron's ancestors in 1736, he knew ancestral ties from a young age...not in an arrogant or stuffy way, but in a sense which acknowledged the connectivity of humanity, of being linked to a wide body of personalities, places, and times...the understanding that all of these have an influence on the personhood of the present. Accompanying this sense of connectivity was another gift, the art of story-telling which has so enshrined the Carolina Coast through its remarkable library of folklore and history. This environment of rich story-telling, a way of preserving family and regional history, combined with an almost genetic and God-given talent for expressing those stories in written form have congealed into the type of writing Styron's readers have grown to love. Though his genealogy reveals a shared bloodline with the late novelist William Styron, as well as the journalistic work of his great-grandfather Jimmie Guthrie, Styron's art is heavily influenced by his own generation, training, and personal experience. "I am a story-teller, a story-maker," Styron states. "I value the human experience in all of its forms and variety; consequently, I seek to bring that into my fiction literature in very realistic ways. I believe that catharsis can lead to change and desire for my work to accomplish more than simple entertainment. My prayer is for my work and personhood to be used for good in the world. I care less that a reader is entertained and more that one is moved, walking away from the reading awakened to deeper rivers of compassion and love for their fellow humanity. If one life is touched for the better...then, I am pleased."