The Missouri Kid by James Melvin Scott, Cathy Scott (Editor)

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From the Publisher

The Missouri Kid, chronicles the life of a boy growing up in the Missouri Ozarks. While his parents, who were farmers, didn't have much - very few families did - they provided their four children with a rich childhood in an environment surrounded by nature. Missouri is a network of great rivers and magnificent streams. Scott grew up hunting and fishing on the rivers and in the Ozark Hills of Missouri. Scott's story takes you through his early years, through his youth, when he played high school basketball and was a cowboy in the rodeo, and into adulthood, when he eventually left Missouri, crossed the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim with a friend as he headed out West, to California, to pursue the American dream.

Danny Kathriner

Although a book about a country boy growing up in poverty and struggling with his family to survive is nothing original, Scott's art of storytelling can turn ordinary history into captivating anecdotes. Each of the thirty-plus chapters in this book comprises short narratives connected by chronological timeline. While reading The Missouri Kid, one cannot help but ponder similarities between Scott's life and that of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. Though Scott's stories read like fiction (which only add to the charm), they are poignant historical and sociological rediscoveries of a time and place that are unfamiliar to many today. This is what makes The Missouri Kid so essential and so relevant; it is a fascinating, fun and quick read for anyone interested in taking a journey into the past.

Fall 2002 - Gateway Heritage Magazine

The Missouri Kid is a coming-of-age memoir that takes us back to James Melvin Scott's formative days growing up in the rural Ozark foothills during the early 1900s. Born in 1911, Scott spent much of his childhood hunting and fishing for sustenance, and his book describes many of his adventures along the way. Scott's stories of finishing high school, finding his first teaching job (during the middle of the Great Depression) and becoming a local rodeo "celebrity" are impressive. Perhaps the most forceful and heartfelt narrative, however, is that of Scott's ill-fated relationship with his first, true love. As an added bonus, Scott describes experiences (passed down from oral traditions) of his ancestors. Most notable is a narrative about his grandfather's run-in with "bushwhackers," who notoriously killed innocent country folk while ravaging many parts of southern Missouri during the 1860s.

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents