He published a book before I did.
Which, geeze, I suppose, is fair. He has only devoted his entire professional life to writing and pursuing a Ph.D in Literature. Okay, okay, fine.
For the seven or eight readers of mine who are not related to me, Ken Hada is my first cousin. He grew up in Arkansas, but like all good Hadas, his heart is really a Hungarian cabbage roll stuffed with red Oklahoma dirt. That's why his best poetry is about The Home Place. The cover art? That's The Crick Bank. (We've covered the correct pronunciation of "creek", here, on our blog before. This is different. This is The Crick Bank. That's its name, and it's always Crick, never creek.)
The artist is another first cousin and Ken's brother, Duane Hada. And that is exactly how The Crick Bank looks. The Crick Bank, up behind the barn and past the junk pile, was a wonderfully terrifying place for a little kid to obsess about being told not to go to. I think all of us grandkids have had a nightmare or two about it. Duane got it just right.
I got a little teary-eyed just reading his e-mail about the book: I can't imagine what actually reading it will do to me.
2 CLICK HERE, and you can have your say, too!:
it's in the blood, apparently.
It's the cabbage.
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