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Reviews for Not Just a Lady by Charles R.
Yarbro
The Log Cabin Democrat
of Conway, Arkansas
STORYTELLER
"I come from a family of storytellers. At holidays, we'd end up in the family room telling stories," he said.
Yarbro, who lives in Conway, is a cowboy-boot wearing fan of Western movies and books, so there was never much doubt what kind of book he'd write. Set in the late 1800s, a main character is Richard Ash, who was falsely accused of murder and goes on a journey to take his orphaned nephew, Justin, to find a new home. On the way, he meets a woman who is "not just a lady." A Blytheville native, Yabro said his grandmother was more than a little handy with a gun. "She could draw a pistol, twirl it, roll it, and slide it back in the holster in one move. I remember as a kid just being bug-eyed watching that," he said. His grandmother grew up in Jackson, Tenn. "They were just pioneer people," he said. "They literally hunted and fished to eat. It (shooting a gun) was also something she enjoyed. She was a little bit of a show off ... She really had good eye-hand coordination." Yarbro got his first gun at age 10. It was a .22-caliber on top and a .410 on the bottom. "It was mine, but I was similar to Barney Fife. There was one shell, but it was in my daddy's pocket." He grew up on a farm, and he got pretty good with guns, too. "I spent hours on that farm just plinking" with a pistol. "I could twirl and spin and do all these things I talk about these people doing in the book." Yarbro emphasized, however, that nobody in the book is real. There are a couple of stories he borrowed about his grandmother and changed, but that's it. He also used the name Comer as a gesture to his friend Greg Comer from Grace United Methodist Church, where the Yarbro family attends. Yarbro and his wife, Peggy, have a son, Bret. The mountain man in the book is Claudell Comer. "Claudell is just a hoot," Yarbro said. Yarbro was thrilled to get to sign autographs at That Bookstore in Blytheville. The author gets to sign the big oak chair they sit in, and, "I selfishly chose to sign the (chair) leg by John Grisham. I thought that was fun." A publisher contacted him about making the book into a hardback. "I was pleasantly surprised." All he had to do was add about 30,000 words. There are two bad gangs in the book, and the second one makes the first one "look like a church choir." Yarbro graduated from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and worked as a teacher and administrator in the Gosnell School District for 30 years, retiring as assistant superintendent. "When I retired, I had time on my hands." He sat down at the computer and let his imagination go. "It was just so easy - it just happened. I'd sit down about an hour a day and play with it." He said the story came together in about four months. Dialogue flowed, just like it had when he was growing up. Yarbro recalls getting a fountain pen in fourth grade and learning to write in cursive. "From the moment I got that pen, I told people in my family I wanted to write something." He described "Not Just A Lady" as entertaining. "It has colorful characters. It's not a campfire yarn, but it's told that way. This is told from an eyewitness point of view ... it's like you're seeing this happen." He rates it PG-14, because of the violence. Author Richard L. Evans called it, "Brilliant! A heart-pounding page-turner from start to finish." His favorite compliment, though, came from a friend who lent his book to a friend whose mother was undergoing an outpatient procedure. When the mother was ready to leave the hospital, the "woman made her mother stay 30 more minutes so she could finish the book," Yarbro said, laughing. The book is available through the Internet on the Barnes and Noble Web site, as well as Amazon.com or ArcheBooks.com. Yarbro said he considers being able to have his book published, "just another blessing in my life." He encourages other would-be authors to give it a whirl. "If I can do this, they can do this." |
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Charles Yarbro's idea for a book started developing when he was a child,
listening to his relatives spin tales when they got together and
watching his grandmother spin a pistol like Annie Oakley. 
