Wanted: Good Family (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781933964904)

Joseph G. Anthony, a New Jersey-born Kentucky author, moved in 1980 from what he considered the center of the country--Manhattan�s Upper West Side--to Hazard, Kentucky. "It was a place so isolated and obscure that I at first felt as lost as a missing person. But it was, I discovered, its own country." In fiction he began to explore its beauty, its many problems, its strengths and its weaknesses. �Fiction feels and understands: racism is in your face, poverty on your back. News stories can only report.�

Anthony, an English professor for 35 years, is a hybrid-Kentuckian now. His accent might still be North Eastern, but he sees with an insider-outsider�s eye. He regularly contributes essays and poems to local periodicals and anthologies, including a poem and story in Kentucky�s Twelve Days of Christmas. He�s a "Kentucky Colonel" (someone once sent his name in), but he�s more Kentucky peasant. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife of 36 years, Elise Mandel, also a hybrid Kentuckian. They have three grown children. His previous books include 2 novels, Peril, Kentucky, and Pickering�s Mountain, plus 2 short story collections, Camden Blues, and Bluegrass Funeral.