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  Janice Holt Giles

      When he boarded her bus dressed in his best Army uniform, Henry Giles and Janice Holt (Giles) shared a seat on a trip that took him to a Texas Army base and  her back home to Arkansas.  The two began a spirited correspondence that led to marriage (her third) in 1945 and eventually home to the mountains and there she began her writing career.  Janice Holt Giles, noted Appalachian author was born on March 28, 1909 in Altus, Arkansas but following the birth of her daughter and a divorce from her first husband, she moved with her daughter, Libby, to Frankfort and  later to Louisville, Kentucky, resuming her work with churches and other religious organizations.  Later, she married a G. I. (her second marriage) shortly after meeting Henry Giles on that bus trip but this marriage didn't last long, only about a year, until her divorce and then her marriage to Henry Giles. 

     Giles began her literary career after moving to a 40 acre family farm on the Green River in the hills of Adair County, Kentucky  with her husband Henry in 1949.  The farm had been in her family since the Revolutionary War.   Her success as a writer began with a trilogy of novels about life in the hills which remain to this day among her most popular works.  Giles stories, unlike many, were enduring stories of the hills and the strong people who lived there.  While others were writing of desperate mountain communities saved by outsiders who moved to the mountains to do good, Janice Holt Giles was reveling in spinning tales of  the spirited mountain folk helping the outsiders get their lives together.   Janice wrote non-fiction personal experience books, which examine the hill country culture and its people.

   

      partial listing of writings by Janice Holt Giles
     
h    The Enduring Hills, New York:  Westminister Press, 1950
      Miss Willie, New York:  Westminister Presss, 1951
      Tara's Healing, New york:  Westminiter, 1951owler, New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1956
     The Believers, New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1957
     The Land Beyond the Mountains, New York:  Houghton-Mifflin, 1957
     Johnny Osage, New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1960
     Savanna, New York:  Houghton-Mifflin, 1961
     Voyage to Santa Fe, New York:  Houghton-Mifflin, 1962
     A Little Better than Plumb, New York:  Houghton-Mifflin, 1963
     Run Me A River, New York:  Houghton-Mifflin, 1964
     Shady Grove, New York:  Houghton-Mifflin, 1967