STORY | ATOM

Pretty Babies Grow Up Ugly and Other Old-Time Beliefs, the latest book by Clyde Roy Pack, is out in paperback as well as a version for Amazon Kindle e-book readers and apps from Story/ATOM Publishing.

The paperback is $10 (plus shipping and handling). The purchase price is $2.99, or it’s free to borrow Amazon Prime members.

Written with his son, Todd, the book describes hundreds of old-time cures and superstitions, most of them submitted by readers of “Poison Oak & Country Folk,” Clyde Roy Pack’s syndicated cartoon that ran in several Eastern Kentucky newspapers from 1983-98. From the back cover:

“Before good health care and decent schools reached the hollows of Eastern Kentucky, families struggled to make sense of the world around them. When a baby was born or a mother fell ill, families could do little but hope and pray and look for signs. They relied on old superstitions and a deep Christian faith to help them make sense of a world they didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

“Illustrated with classic cartoons from Clyde Roy Pack’s “Poison Oak & Country Folk,” the cures and superstitions in Pretty Babies Grow Up Ugly offer a unique and humorous look at some of the beliefs of ordinary families who lived in the Southern Appalachians a century ago.”

Clyde Roy Pack’s other books include Muddy Branch: Memories of an Eastern Kentucky Coal Camp (published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation), Coal-Camp Chronicles, Going Back and Dear Hearts & Gentle People: Rural Americans at Their Best (published by Where? Press).

Click here to buy Pretty Babies Grow Up Ugly and Other Old-Time Beliefs.