Welcome to my blog! Here's a little about me...

In the academic phase of my life I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of teaching social ethics and theology - in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States - I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.

We live in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where writing and woodworking are in the blood, the woods, the mountains, and the story-telling culture of both Cherokee and European settlers. The massive tulip poplar behind me in the photo was a sapling when colonial settlers and Cherokee inhabitants struggled for control of this land. Contemporary struggles for reconciliation in these mountains find deep resonance in the experiences of South Africans, with whom I have lived and worked for much of the last ten years. As Lanier Johnson, one of the contemporary characters would say, exploration of these connections is what this book is all about.

When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings from the wood that grows around me. For more about my work, go to http://www.wisdomstable.net/, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River.