About the Author

Reviewed by Grant Leishman for Readers’ Favorite

One-legged Uncle Jesse by Mike Morris is a gentle, sweet journey across multiple generations of the Sargents and the Stewarts. Set in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the story chronicles the lives and descendants of a full-blooded Creek Indian woman, known to the family as just Ma, who crossed the cultural and racial line to marry a white man, a mill owner called James Buchanan Sargent in Millerville, Clay County, Alabama. One thing was for sure about Ma, you were never left in any doubt about what she thought of something. Two things she couldn’t abide were white men’s lies about her beloved Creek Indian land and their religion, which they continually used to justify their actions against Native Americans. As generations of Sargents and Stewarts gather in 2022, at the rest home of Arvis, Ma's granddaughter, to celebrate Arvis’ 98th birthday, a question about whether Uncle Jesse had one leg or two begins this multi-generational retrospective.

One-legged Uncle Jesse is a wonderful, heartwarming tale that is more than just a retrospective chronicling one family’s progression through the latter part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is a social commentary on life in the Deep South, its religiosity, inherent racism, and binding familial relationships. A story that encompasses the dawn of a new century and the hope inherent in that but runs through two wars and a devastating depression serves to underline the courage, resilience, and sheer determination ordinary folk had to display to survive and keep their sanity in this harsh environment. Author Mike Morris has created some endearing characters that I know readers will take to instantly. I particularly appreciated Ma with her dry wit, her deep sarcasm, and her unwillingness to let any religious statement go unchallenged. It was clear that humor was a critical part of keeping people grounded and also that women were, as so often is the case, the true backbone of both the family and the community. It is ironic, given Ma’s vehement disgust at the white man’s religion that the church and gospel music should play such an integral part in keeping this family together. The author’s beautifully descriptive style paints a true picture of how hard this life was for the Stewarts and the Sargents and equally how they managed to see their way through the enormous difficulties of their daily lives. This is a relaxing and satisfying read that I can highly recommend.