Southern writer book signing
By FRANK BRADLEY Sentinel Writer

Farrol Sams, an acclaimed Southern writer was in Murphy last week signing copies of his new novel Down Town. There was a steady line of folks at the Curiosity Shop Bookstore purchasing Sams books and exchanging pleasantries with him until the last of his books sold out.

Sams retired earlier this year as a family doctor. He said he and his wife, Dr. Helen, had a combined service of 111 years as practicing physicians, first as country doctors and later as urban family physicians, all in Fayetteville, Georgia, just south of Atlanta.

Sams broke into the literary scene in the early '80's with the publication of Run With The Horsemen, a novel based on his early experiences growing up in rural Georgia in the 1930s. A second novel, The Whisper Of The River, followed based on his experiences as an undergraduate at Mercer University. The third novel in the trilogy, When All The World Was Young, evolved out of his experiences in the Medical Corps in WWII. Sams is a fascinating storyteller. All three books in the trilogy revolve around the character, Porter Osborne.

Sams said he always thought he could write. He had been encouraged in college and told that he had a knack for writing. He said he had been taught there to narrow your subject, write about something you know and don't make a comma fault, or you will flunk the course. He said his writing professor asked him after he finished his second course in advanced composition, what he was going to do with his life.

"I told him I was going to be a country doctor," he said. "And he told me, 'You could make a living writing.'"

After Sams children were grown and had left home, he said he had moments when he felt his own mortality, which led to his first novel.

"I got up early every morning and wrote," Sams told me. "The first 70 pages, I tore up because I recognized it was poor writing." Sams said the most difficult book for him to write was the last one in the trilogy. "It took me 12 years to complete it," he said.

In addition to the trilogy, Sams has also written volumes of short stories as well as a Christmas story.

Sams said his latest novel came about because people had told him that things aren't the same today as they used to be. We don't have the characters we used to have, they said.

That can't be said about the people who inhabit Ferrol Sams' books, which are full of vivid characters. Perhaps, none more so than in this latest book, Down Town. It's a story of folks who have lived and died in a small Southern town during the last one hundred and fifty years.

It's a book full of earthy humor from scheming relatives to pious preachers and land developers. It's also about growth and change. Abirds eye's view of how the rural south and its people have evolved.

Ferrol Sams is a captivating story teller. His sympathetic understanding of ordinary people and their struggles and of the human condition is reminiscent of the writings of Chaucer, Shakespeare and William Faulkner.

If you haven't been a reader of Sams' books, Down Town is sure to get you hooked. If you already are a Sams fan, this is one you won't want to miss.