ABOUT THE BOOK

 

Rooted in the struggle of the Jesse James family to outrun the stigma of an outlaw reputation,

Soul Liberty is the saga of a family destroyed by silence & torn apart by self-inflicted anonymity.

 

Drawing upon long hidden letters, memoirs, & interviews, Soul Liberty recaptures the family that turned on its

own. In this epic pageant of personalities & events, the core behavior, character, and soul of the James emerges – the selfsame character and soul of their outlaws that has eluded historians for more than a century.

 

The Jesse James family is revealed in its paradoxical identity

 

• As rebel preachers in Colonial Virginia

• As sharpshooting defenders of faith & freedom on the Kentucky frontier

• As politicians of an emerging nation

• As millionaire merchants of the American heartland

• As feminist challengers against the status quo

 

The James are community builders, preachers, politicians, financiers, educators, writers, & poets.

Equally, they are pariahs, outcasts, and outlaws.

 

Soul Liberty extracts the compelling power of the James. Their compulsive force for personal freedom,

with religious and political liberty, ever fronts the endemic ability of the James to confound expectation.

 

As the Jesse James family uncovers the history lost to them, they finally answer the question no one else can. Why does Jesse James endure as a cultural American icon?