Authorpreneur Dashboard – Stacy Dean Campbell

Stacy  Dean Campbell

Rambling Heart

Literature & Fiction

Rambling Heart takes you from the deserts of the southwest to the coal mines of Appalachia, to the front seat of a small town police car with a collection of stories, essays, journal entries, and lyrics that paint a broad stroke of a nomadic life amidst America’s blue collar landscape. Sugar Boy finds a young boy exasperated with the rantings of his demented and pining grandfather. Train Not Running - Bonny Blue follows an out of work coal miner into the mountains of Virginia to poach ginseng. Palomino tells of a retired Mexican jockey who gambles his horse in a Texas bordertown card game, while Thawing of a Reliable Man finds a young couple struggling to survive, each forced to make an ultimate sacrifice. In Stagecoach 105 and Redbird, Campbell gives a glimpse into his life as a police officer and as a boy confronted with the convictions of aimlessly taking life under the guise of hunting. Told in a unique gathering of fiction prose, free form writings, and lyric, RAMBLING HEART ambles along conjuring up recollections of early Sam Shepard and Charles Portis. RAMBLING HEART rambles the distant sounds of a storyteller coming into his own.

Book Bubbles from Rambling Heart

Train Not Running, Bonny Blue

This story has special meaning. It is loosely based on a coal miner in St. Charles Virginia that I met while staying there. He had lost his job in the mine and found himself digging for ginseng roots in the hollers and hills around his home. There was a train track that ran just behind the house where I was staying, and also his house which was located just next door. One night a coal train of about 30 cars backed up toward the mine and began filling the cars with coal. Once a car was filled the train would inch forward to the next car and fill it. The noise was terrible and the big Norfolk Southern engine shook the walls of the house as it crawled by. This went on all night long. Didn't sleep five minutes. The next morning he asked how I slept. I said, "How could anybody possibly sleep with that train running all night long." He replied, "I like that sound. When that train's not running there ain't no work and that's when I don't sleep."

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