Meet Josie: The Mississippi Story Time Nearly Forgot
After nearly four decades of telling other people’s stories, I’m finally telling one of my own — my family story.
Some stories find you. Some stories follow you.
And some stories wait more than a century to be told. For me, Josie is that story. I’m incredibly proud—and deeply humbled—to announce the upcoming publication of my historical fiction novel:
Josie: A True Story of Race, Rescue, and Resilience
The book will make its official launch appearance at the 2026 Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Sept. 26, where thousands of readers, writers and literary lovers will gather at the Mississippi State Capitol for Mississippi’s annual celebration of books. It will be a sho’ nuff literary lawn party!
And after years of research, writing, rewriting, imagining and remembering, Josie’s story is finally ready to leave my desk and enter the world.
In 1906, a White Mississippi Businessman Pulled a Black Newborn Out of a Gutter.
What happened next became the story of a lifetime.
And the family that formed around that little girl would create a remarkable Mississippi story of race, rescue, faith, family, compassion and resilience. That little girl was Josie Evans.
My family knew her. I knew her. And for years, I knew there was a story here. But I also knew that telling it would require something more than family memories.
It would require history. Research. Imagination. And the courage to enter a complicated and painful chapter of the American South and ask what happens when ordinary people make an extraordinary choice: to love beyond the boundaries their culture has drawn around them.
A Story Rooted in Truth
Josie is historical fiction inspired by the extraordinary true story of Josie Evans.
The facts gave me the foundation. But history leaves gaps. There are moments when the record falls silent. There are conversations no one wrote down. There are thoughts no diary captured.
There are moments that happened behind closed doors and disappeared with the people who lived them.
That’s where historical fiction begins.
I researched the world Josie inhabited and then imagined the people, conversations and moments where history leaves unanswered questions. The result is a novel that travels across nearly nine decades of Mississippi history.
From the rise of the early 20th-century South and the Great Depression through World War II. From the the Civil Rights Movement through Hurricane Camille — and into a changing American South.
But Josie isn’t really a history lesson. It’s a story about people. People making choices. People carrying wounds. People wrestling with faith. People confronting prejudice. People discovering courage.
And people learning that compassion can sometimes change the trajectory of an entire family.
The Story Behind the Story
Here’s my succinct, colorful description at the heart of Josie:
“In 1906, a white Mississippi businessman pulled a Black newborn out of a gutter — and what the family built around her, and the love they shared, over the next 87 years is the Mississippi story no one has told.”
That sentence was created to make you stop. Make you ponder. Maybe change your way of thinking. Because the story begins with something almost impossible to imagine.
A newborn child. Alone. Abandoned. And then a decision.
A couple — my great grandparents — chose to help her. My family chose audacious hospitality!
And over the next 87 years, the consequences of that decision rippled across generations. That’s what fascinated me, and changed me.
One act of compassion can become a legacy.
Why I Had to Write It
I’ve spent nearly four decades working with words. As a journalist. As a writer. As a communications strategist. As a public relations executive. As a branding consultant.
I’ve spent my career helping organizations discover what they stand for—and then finding the words to make other people understand why it matters.
But Josie asked me to do something different.
It asked me to listen. To remember. To research. To imagine in a whole new light. And ultimately, to tell a story that had lived inside my family for generations.
In some ways, it is the most personal writing I’ve ever done. And perhaps that’s why it had to age like a fine wine.
WordSmith Perspective: Every Brand Begins With a Story
This is where Josie and WordSmith unexpectedly intersect.
I often tell clients that your most powerful story is usually the one that only you can tell. Not the generic story. Not the polished corporate biography. Not the carefully manufactured positioning statement.
The story that belongs uniquely to you.
For WordSmith, I’ve built an entire philosophy around the power of story:
Positioning → Narrative → Execution
But Josie reminds me that before there is positioning, there is something even more fundamental: there is meaning. Why does this story matter? Why should anyone care? What does it tell us about who we are? And what can we carry forward from it?
Those are questions that matter just as much to a family as they do to a corporation. In so many ways, the inspirational story of Josie is the essence of branding.
“In 1906, my great-grandfather walked out into a Mississippi street and heard a sound the rest of the town had decided to ignore. The work of branding is the same work he did that night. Listening for the voice that history is trying to throw away. Giving it a home where it can be heard. WordSmith is what happens when you turn that into a craft.
Race. Rescue. Resilience.
Those three words became the foundation of the book.
Race
Because Josie’s story unfolds in the Jim Crow South, where the color of your skin determined where you lived, learned, worked, worshiped and belonged.
Rescue
Because one extraordinary act changed the trajectory of a child’s life. But rescue in Josie isn’t simply about saving a child. It is about what happens after someone is rescued.
How do you build a life?
How do you create belonging?
How do you become a source of strength for others?
Resilience
Because surviving isn’t the end of the story. What you do with what you’ve survived becomes the story.
That is perhaps the deepest reason I chose resilience for the subtitle. It isn’t simply a characteristic Josie possessed. It became part of the legacy she left behind.
A Mississippi Story — An American Story
Although Josie is deeply rooted in Mississippi, I believe its questions reach far beyond Mississippi and the South.
What does it mean to love when society tells you whom you should fear?
What does courage look like when no one is applauding?
Can one family quietly challenge the assumptions of an entire culture?
What happens when compassion crosses a boundary that society insists should never be crossed?
And perhaps most importantly: what do we owe the generations who come after us?
Those questions are as relevant today as they were in 1906.
The Extraordinary Power of an Ordinary Life
One of the things I love most about Josie’s story is that she wasn’t a president. She wasn’t a general. She wasn’t a celebrity. She didn’t make headlines.
She lived her life. She loved her family. She taught. She served. She worshiped. She endured. She welcomed people. She carried the scars and joys of her time.
And somehow, through all of that, she became extraordinary.
That is why I wanted to write her story.
Because history often remembers the people who stood on the stage. But sometimes the most important lives are lived just offstage.
Lives that change families. Lives that shape children. Lives that quietly cross boundaries. Lives that leave behind a legacy long after the headlines have disappeared.
From My Family to You
Writing Josie has changed the way I think about storytelling.
I’ve always believed that words matter. After all, that’s the business I’ve built my life around.
But this book reminded me that stories matter even more. Because stories carry memory. Stories preserve people. Stories give context to the choices that shaped us. And stories allow one generation to speak to another.
That is what I hope Josie will do.
I hope a reader discovers a piece of Mississippi they didn’t know. I hope someone sees courage where they expected only hardship. I hope someone thinks differently about race.
I hope someone recognizes the power of hospitality. I hope someone remembers that ordinary people can make extraordinary choices.
And I hope, above all, that readers close the final page and think: I won’t forget Josie.
The Journey Begins Sept. 26
That journey officially begins for me at the Mississippi Book Festival on Saturday, Sept. 26, at the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson. The festival is free and open to the public and brings hundreds of authors together with readers from across Mississippi and beyond.
There is something beautifully fitting about launching Josie in Mississippi. This is where her story happened. This is where my family’s story happened.
And now, more than a century after that little girl was found, her story is returning home.
Josie Is Available for Pre-Order
If you’ve followed my work through WordSmith, you’ve heard me talk a lot about story, meaning, resilience, trust and legacy.
Josie is all of those things—but this time, they’re not concepts I’m writing about for a client.
They’re personal.
The book is available now for pre-order.
Pre-order *Josie: A True Story of Race, Rescue, and Resilience* on Amazon
And if you’re planning to be at the Mississippi Book Festival on Sept. 26, I hope you’ll come find me.
I’d love to put a copy of Josie in your hands.
But more than that, I’d love to talk with you about her story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
