ABOUT THE AUTHOR

     H. Melvin James was uniquely prepared to write the epic novel, “Tares among the Wheat.”  Few writers have such wealth of broad relevant personal experience and rich cultural heritage from which to draw in developing such diverse characters and far-flung settings as included in this saga.  

     Melvin was born the seventh of eight siblings on a farm in Oklahoma.  After leaving the farm at seventeen he utilized his farming and ranching skills to hire into commercial jobs, paying his way through two college degrees.  Mr. James’ varied work experiences, throughout his career, contributed authenticity to the fictional characters and their situations as described in his writing.

     Mr. James’ grandparents took part in the Indian Territory’s celebrated Cherokee Outlet Land Run of 1893.  They were the sons and daughters of immigrants from first to twelfth-generation Americans, including Irish, German, Czech, Dutch, and English.  They participated in America’s history, from the Revolutionary War and through the great Westward Expansion.  Their rich and colorful cultures, customs, and superstitions are the legacy from which Mr. James drew in creating his characters, plots, and story lines.    

     Cherished tales of his relatives’ experiences during the dramatic eras of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially from the perspective of the southern Great Plains, keenly contributed to Melvin’s writing.  Glimpses of the momentous events of the era, timelines of this novel, World War I, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, oil booms, the decadent Roaring Twenties, the doom of the Dirty Thirties, and the horrific Dust Bowl, are woven into the pages of this intriguing tale.    

     When not engaged in their love of travel, Mr. James and his wife reside in a house of his personal detailed design, constructed between forest and meadow on the farm where he was raised.