Doing the Possible

About the Book

Doing the Possible tells the life-story of an early Primitive Baptist church in the wildness of northeast Alabama, a late-blooming area of the state that was a sanctuary for Cherokee Indians being pushed toward extinction. White settlers-prominent among them the family of William (Billy) Edwards who gave his name and a tract of land to the new county seat-established in the inhospitable hills and hollows a thriving church and community. They built a warm fellowship that was often disrupted by theological controversy as they set a course quite different from the "mainstream" church-and once the community was shocked by an act of physical violence, murder in the churchyard. And there are glimpses of the backwoods enterprise on which a few members depended heavily, the profitable conversion of corn into the moonshine for which the area is noted. But mostly it is a story of plain, hardy people living and loving together.

About the Author

Joseph M. Jones is a fifth-generation child of the Cane Creek Primitive Baptist Church. While not a member of the church himself, his forebears were among the founders and he has an enduring high regard for the church and the Cane Creek community. Jones is a retired executive of the NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama.