Cumberland Island is the southernmost and largest barrier island on the Georgia coast, with a history that predates the arrival of Western civilization in the Americas. Currently, it has few full- time residents, but its beauty brings thousands of visitors each year from around the world. Day hikers and overnight campers bask in Cumberland's tranquility and marvel at its natural treasures, walking beneath canopies of live oak trees draped in Spanish moss. Comprising three major ecosystem regions, Cumberland is home to large areas of salt marshes and a dense maritime forest, but its most famous ecosystem is its beach, which stretches over seventeen miles. The island is also home to many native and nonnative species, such as white-tailed deer, turkey, feral hogs and horses, wild boar, nine-banded armadillos, and American alligators, as well as many species of birds. Aside from wild horses and the remains of Thomas M. Carnegie's estate, most visitors are unaware of the details of the island's varied history. Cumberland's past tells a rich and complex story, one of conquest by indigenous tribes, French and Spanish explorers, English settlers, cotton planters, and occupation by British and Union naval forces. Cumberland Island: Footsteps in Time is the first book about the island that offers readers a complete history of the island combined with stunning photography and historical images. Richly illustrated with more than 250 color and black-and-white photographs, it is a comprehensive history, from native occupation to the present. Author Stephen Doster takes the reader on a chronological journey, outlining the key events and influential inhabitants that have left their mark on this stretch of Georgia's coast. Each chapter focuses on a specific era: indigenous occupation; Spanish occupation; English occupation; the colonial period and War of 1812; the planter era and Civil War; the Gilded Age; north-end settlements and hotels; and the creation of a protected national seashore.

Cumberland Island: Footsteps in Time

History

Doster, Stephen

Americas

University of Georgia Press

Take a step back in history and watch events unfold through the eyes of those who lived it. Meet senators and musicians, lawyers and doctors. Meet people from all walks of life and learn the thread that binds them all together to make the state of Georgia great.

Georgia Witness: A Contemporary Oral History of the State

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Deer Hawk Enterprises

Can a place hold a memory? Do actions of the past have sway over what happens in the future? Do memories create magic, or does the magic create memories? Step into a world where magic and mystery combine, where the past blends with the present and events beyond belief unfold. Then realize it could really happen: In a state called Georgia. Step into Shadow Child’s world, a collection of seventeen stories, sixteen fiction and one non, following the history of Georgia from 400 years ago to today, where the land tells a story of joy, sorrow, pain, and triumph; where anything can happen in the hearts that beat on it and are buried in it.

Shadow Child: Tales of the Georgia Coast

Literature & Fiction

Short Stories & Anthologies

Deer Hawk Publications

<div>Drawing on the voices of residents from across the state, this oral history reflects on life in Georgia as it evolved throughout the twentieth century. Author Stephen Doster grew up on St. Simons Island, one of Georgia's Golden Isles. He began interviewing fellow island residents and captured their personal histories in the book Voices from St. Simons. Now, Doster has expanded the scope of his work to encompass the entire state of Georgia. In Georgia Witness, Doster records the stories of residents from all across the state, capturing the unique life and history of its many communities. Here are the voices of influential figures and ordinary residents, individuals of varying backgrounds and ethnicities, all of whom remember and contribute to the legacy and lifeblood of the peach state.</div>

Arts & Literature

Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

Her Finest Hour: One Teen's Personal War with Hitler's Germany

<div>A Black man wrongly convicted of murder attempts to rebuild his life and bring the real killer to justice, in this historical novel based on a true story. In the summer of 1932, Ben Jordan was wrongfully accused of killing a white pastor in Georgia. After a hasty trial, he was sentenced to a life of grueling labor on a chain gang and abuse at the hands of brutal wardens. But now, with his forty-year prison sentence completed, Ben is finally returning home. As he struggles to understand the profound changes the world has undergone, some things remain painfully the same--including the hateful animosity towards Black people and the fact that the real murderer is still living the life of a genteel southerner. Working to rebuild his life and see justice served, Ben faces one confrontation after another--with friend, foe, and a daughter who thinks he is dead. In this novel based on a real Depression Era murder case, author and Georgia historian Stephen Doster presents a vividly accurate depiction of Jim Crow's long and painful legacy.</div>

Jesus Tree

Genre Fiction

Coastal Georgia in the depths of the Great Depression. A white minister is murdered and a young African-American man is convicted of the killing and sent to a brutal prison farm. Forty years later, Ben Jordan finally emerges a free man, struggling to understand a world that has undergone profound change, and sets out on a mission to bring the true killer to justice. Jesus Tree is a compelling, captivating story of a man's search for his past and his soul - rendered vividly by a writer of unique gifts. Stephen Doster has given us that very best thing of fiction: a rousing tale, beautifully told. Robert Inman, author of The Governor's Lady

Writer and oral historian Stephen Doster is the author of fiction and non-fiction, including two oral histories. He was born in Kingston-On-Thames, England and raised on St. Simons Island, Georgia. His literary works are focused on Georgia and the Georgia Coast. He holds degrees from the University of Georgia and Vanderbilt University and currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife, Anne. "The island I grew up on happens to be on the 31st parallel north of the Equator, which includes the geographic area below Savannah, north of the Georgia-Florida border, and everything east and west of that. Down on the 31st and 32nd Parallels, you're in the Deep South of the "Deep South." Look at all the writers who come from those strips, and don't surprised if you see similarities in their works. It has to do with their shared history, the geography, and the people who inhabit those realms. Many of the early Georgia settlers traveled directly west to settle regions in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. They took their histories and their stories with them. Part of the Southern writer's job is to resurrect those stories and their histories in creating new works. It's recycling of the highest order."

W & B Publishers

A dynamic, tragic, engaging saga of crime, race hatred and bigotry in the South. In the summer of 1932 Ben, a black man from Georgia, is wrongfully accused of murder. His forty-year prison sentence completed, he returns home to where nothing much has changed except the date on the calendar, including the animosity towards blacks and the fact that the real murderer is still living the gentile southern life. Ben’s struggle to regain his life and adjust to society brings one confrontation after another with friend, foe, and a daughter who thinks he is dead.

W & B Publishers Inc.

*****A teen-age girl survives World War II *****Terry Smith was a teenager attending art school in a London suburb when World War II began. Before it was over, her family would be bombed out of three homes, her fiancé would be killed fighting Rommel’s forces in North Africa, and she would join the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force). She was stationed in the Operations Rooms on seven RAF (Royal Air Force) bases, including Speke, Northolt, Uxbridge, Tangmere, Blackgang (Isle of Wight), Ford, and Norfolk. During the war she encountered RAF legends Douglas Bader and Leonard Cheshire as well as the indomitable Winston Churchill. Her memories of life on RAF bases from the perspective of a WAAF provides a unique window into this great conflict. Her work with “the big secret” (radar), early in the war was something she couldn’t even discuss with family.  In this memoir, Terry Smith recounts life in England leading up to the war, her six years of service during the war, and life in a recovering England in which she served as a BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) hostess on proving flights to Africa --where former German POWs still serviced BOAC planes two years after the war -- and the Far East. She ran into glass ceilings that stymied advancement in the WAAF and for women in general, with the BOAC, and with the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). In many ways her recollections are those of most women of the WWII era: death, destruction, working for their war effort and surviving. An American flyer, Harold Carver, who billeted with her family was shot down and sent to Stalag Luft 1. Sixty years later, Terry Smith and that pilot would be reunited in America. A grand gift in memories, yes, but not the end of the story.Terry Smith Doster is still with us, spirited as ever, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She is of an admirable generation who believed in that deeply. Scroll up and grab a copy today.

Her Finest Hour

Community & Culture

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Doster, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Doster, Stephen

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Doster, Stephen. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cumberland Island: Footsteps in Time

Georgia Witness: A Contemporary Oral History of the State

Shadow Child: Tales of the Georgia Coast

Georgia Witness: A Contemporary Oral History of the State

Her Finest Hour: One Teen's Personal War with Hitler's Germany

Jesus Tree

Jesus Tree

Georgia Witness: A Contemporary Oral History of the State

Jesus Tree

Her Finest Hour