Sam Tatum was raised in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas. After graduation he attended Prairie View A & M University on a football scholarship
where he first began to realize his love for writing.
But, it was not until after the death of his second wife that he published his first novel. Sam Tatum now resides in Dallas and writes. He enjoys the live
jazz of his brother’s band “AJ and New Breed”, art, working out, reading and photography.
The title, itself, “Returned to Paradise”, can mean many things to many people. Just the title itself can conjure a multitude of thoughts of what one can dream of and want for their own life or how it would end or what waits in the beyond. The book, “Returned to Paradise” is Sam Tatum’s, one author’s, thoughts of what that phrase means. “Returned to Paradise” is a series of short stories dealing with what life and death could mean. But, saying that, “Returned” deserves readership for with great imagination and dedication to original stories of love, horror and the ‘somewhat’ bizarre, Sam Tatum goes into original story telling that will take you on a true journey
Excerpt
Banshee House
“The year was 1873, ten years after the abolishment of slavery in America. My Daddy told me that when I was young he had envisioned me as the master of a fine plantation. But before I could mature enough to share his dream, the industry died. I don’t think that I would have been very successful, though, as my best friend was a black. I remember Cleo well. I don’t remember when he was born but the details are so engraved in my mind that I may know of his life better than his own mother.
“My father was a southern cattleman and had just hired the Baileys to help. Then, the black men were called cowboys because they weren’t ever to be cattlemen who were the white bosses. The blacks, though, did a good job roping and breaking and such. It seemed, for some time, that the end of slavery was a blessing because there wasn’t any way that a man in bondage was going to ride a horse.
“My Daddy was Sean McCallister. He was a very successful cattle rancher but often told me that we weren’t rich. I remember him being a strong man and serious about life. He was stern over all of his workers, even the white ones. I don’t remember him ever being a loving, caring husband but he must have been because he was a good provider. My mother, Laura McKinney McCallister, was a beautiful, timid, red head woman who didn’t speak much. I often suspected that to be the attitude of a wife; shy and retiring. Later, I learned the reasons why.
“I remember the night that I first heard the screams. As a boy, I soon
called the Bailey home the Banshee House. It was an extremely hot summer
and the old people would say that the devil was restless, bringing the heat of
Hell with him. It must have been the truth, the part about Hell. This summer,
though, he did not only bring Hell’s fire but something more sinister. I’m an
old man, now, and if not for these images constantly burning themselves into my mind, even after all of these years, I might have long ago forgotten about that cattle ranch, the Baileys, Cleo and perhaps even my own Daddy.
“No one on the McCallister ranch dared heed the searing heat of the summer. Summer of ’73 would be remembered as the one that separated men who would be strong and those who would weaken under adversity. Most people believed that nature had its own ways of balancing all things to bring continuity to the world even if weak men had to die so that the strong could continue passing their superior genes.”
In this eccentric tale set in a small town in northern India, Pawan Mishra masterfully weaves ingenuity and sarcasm in a manner that’s simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
Celts and Kings: The story behind the mystifying disappearance of the Celtic Earls in 1607. The story of a lost love and Celtic Spirituality.
The story of a forbidden love going back 400 years.
The story steeped in Irish history, Ce
