Wealth of experience provides a unique basis for Mr. James’ literary fiction writings. He has harvested grain across the Great Plains from the Red River to the Canadian border, decoded top secret electronic signals in the Arctic Circle, accomplished major projects on Air Force One and many other strategic and classified aircraft, built petrochemical equipment for the Middle East, driven transport trucks in Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York, picked lemons in California, picked cotton in Oklahoma, and built computers in Colorado and Kansas.
Melvin has skills and certifications to weld steel, fly airplanes, overhaul diesel engines, paint automobiles, program computers, operate heavy construction machinery, and design and constuct residential, commercial, and industrial facilities.
He has degrees in engineering, business administration, and years of technical training. He has led work crews of hundreds of employees in various industries, managed hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts and operating budgets, and served as his town’s mayor for twenty years. Mr. James has traveled the world, west to Japan, north to the Aleutian Islands, south to the Rio Grande, east to Greece and Israel, and to a score of other nations in between.
H. Melvin James is unique as a literary fiction author. To write an epic two-volume literary fiction novel, he drew on his ancestors’ tales and his own diverse experiences, broad travels, and rich cultural heritage in developing vivid characters and far-flung, realistic settings for the saga, “Tares among the Wheat.
Melvin left the family farm at seventeen to work commercial jobs and pay his own way through two college degrees. His vast work experiences, from laborer to engineering management, employed from Texas to North Dakota, and from Massachusetts to Alaska, contribute authenticity to characters, scenes, and situations described in his novel.
Mr. James’s ancestors were pioneers in the Indian Territory’s celebrated Cherokee Outlet Land Run of 1893, fourteen years before Oklahoma’s statehood. Their stories were re-imagined, from the dramatic eras of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially from the perspective of the southern Great Plains, including glimpses of the monumental events of World War I, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, oil booms and busts, the decadent Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, the Dirty Thirties, and the horrific Dust Bowl.
The Publisher’s Introduction….. to the Author of……. TARES AMONG THE WHEAT
H. Melvin James was uniquely prepared to write the epic novel, “Tares among the Wheat.” Few writers have such wealth of broad relevant personal experience and rich cultural heritage from which to draw in developing such diverse characters and far-flung settings as included in this saga.
Melvin was born the seventh of eight siblings on a farm in Oklahoma. After leaving the farm at seventeen he utilized his farming and ranching skills to hire into commercial jobs, paying his way through two college degrees. Mr. James’ varied work experiences, throughout his career, contributed authenticity to the fictional characters and their situations as described in his writing.
Mr. James’ grandparents took part in the Indian Territory’s celebrated Cherokee Outlet Land Run of 1893. They were the sons and daughters of immigrants from first to twelfth-generation Americans, including Irish, German, Czech, Dutch, and English. They participated in America’s history, from the Revolutionary War and through the great Westward Expansion. Their rich and colorful cultures, customs, and superstitions are the legacy from which Mr. James drew in creating his characters, plots, and story lines.
Cherished tales of his relatives’ experiences during the dramatic eras of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially from the perspective of the southern Great Plains, keenly contributed to Melvin’s writing. Glimpses of the momentous events of the era, timelines of this novel, World War I, the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, oil booms, the decadent Roaring Twenties, the doom of the Dirty Thirties, and the horrific Dust Bowl, are woven into the pages of this intriguing tale.
When not engaged in their love of travel, Mr. James and his wife reside in a house of his personal detailed design, constructed between forest and meadow on the farm where he was raised.