Benjamin's Journey chronicles the life journey of the author and his large, extended family starting with his birth on the family farm on Collins Mountain in Wise County, Virginia. The son of a coal miner, he grew up in an environment dominated by poverty and diminished expectations but also steeped in the strong values and experiences of the southern Appalachian culture. Following his graduation as the first member of his extended family to earn a college degree, he went on to a successful business career and personal life. It tells the story of how the author spent much of his adult life trying to run away from the negative stereotypes associated with his Appalachian culture only to return later in life. The Appalachia to which he returned was vastly different from the one that he left thirty years earlier due to the ravages of the drug epidemic, chronic poverty, and the collapse of the coal industry. The challenges of being born in Appalachia are real, but the author's uplifting message is that, not only can these challenges be overcome, he offers a detailed plan of how to do it.An excerpt from Benjamin's Journey was the First Place Award Winner for Non-fiction by the Appalachian Author's Guild and was later selected as the Second Place Award Winner by the Virginia Writers Club during the Golden Nib 2018 statewide competition.
