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INTERVIEW by LaReeca Rucker, reporter (The Madison County Herald) PHOTO by Will Smith
Collection of Reflection New book traces life journey By LaReeca Rucker
Rusty Van Reeves grew up in a slightly
dilapidated, antebellum home on the edge of Newton Avenue and Deere Street
in Newton. "Banana bikes, bell-bottom jeans, catching fireflies in jelly jars after supper, holding hands with your best girl in the Roxy movie theater were what we did," said Reeves, now a Madison resident. "We were a cross between Mayberry and the movie 'Dazed and Confused.' It was an innocent time in small-town America." But the innocence of Reeves' idyllic Southern childhood ended in 1975 when the then-teenager was paralyzed from the neck down during a freak high school football accident. Six months later, his father committed suicide. "For a time, Newton Avenue was our Yellow Brick Road to the magical land of Oz, but life takes its toll on all of us eventually," Reeves writes in the introduction to his new book. "Newton Ave." is a collection of Reeves' "A Southern Son" columns that were first published in The Madison County Herald. "Being a memoir, it mostly deals with me, my family, my relationships, my faith, my old hometown - an era during the mid-'60s to mid-'70s that most baby boomers can relate to," Reeves said. The book contains 52 columns, eight poems and a lengthy foreword detailing the accident that left Reeves paralyzed. "The stories are a heartfelt look back at life in the 1970s within the small Mississippi town of Newton," he said. "They are reflective, somber accounts of childhood with an uplifting message. "These stories were born during my time there in that wonderful place beneath the old oaks. Finding fragments of your own life in these pages will be easy." Reeves said more than 10 percent of the columns were later submitted to and accepted by prominent literary journals. "Most are 'rite-of-passage' stories," he said. "Some readers have likened the style of narration I use to 'The Waltons' or 'The Wonder Years.' " Reeves stopped writing the column for The Herald when he felt he had written all he could about his life prior to the accident and before his family left Newton. "I ran out of material because after the paralysis my life became so different," Reeves said. Fiction is his medium now. He recently finished "Lighting Tree," a novel set in the 1950s that will be released Jan. 1 by Van Wander Press. "It deals with race, basic human needs, love and that yearning we all share to have a richer, fuller life," he said. Reeves said the novel, planned as the first book in a trilogy, was heavily influenced by "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Color Purple."
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