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Donald R. James was born to David F. James and Hattie Freeman James on August 16, 1947, in Desoto County, about a hundred miles north of Carroll County, where the family was soon to live on the family farm. For a dozen years, the Jameses farmed a small acreage by dint of sweat and calluses, and Donald spent hours under a blazing sun, hoeing and picking cotton and doing whatever chores he was called on to do. In the evenings, he and his siblings would go home from school and rush to the fields. Sometimes they would get to ride atop a bale of cotton on the way to the gin. Donald went to two separate schools as a youth and eventually graduated from J. Z. George High School after thirteen years of sporadic study. While going to school at Valley, a small country institution in central Carroll County, Donald spent more time reading library books for pleasure than he did studying his lessons. It was then that he decided to write books because he wanted to give others the pleasure of reading his. Even at that early age, Donald's altruism was at work. At fourteen, he wrote sixty pages on a western, which, as a senior in high school, he was so disgusted with that he threw it in the fire. Similarly, after he had written four hundred pages on another, he lost interest in it and allowed it to be lost when a neighbor bought the house where the incomplete novel was stored. Pursuant to his desire to be a writer, Donald studied English in Holmes Junior College and worked to get his bachelor's degree at Mississippi State University, later to teach school at Carrollton, his hometown. But he tired of the stress involved in keeping order in the classrooms, so he began a career in steelwork. In the ensuing years, he was a preacher, a shop foreman, and a politician. Yet his one bid for public office fell short by a small number of votes, and he returned to construction work. Eventually, he met a Louisiana Cajun woman and married her. He was then forty-four. At thirty-one, he had come down with schizophrenia and suffered with the mental confusion of hearing voices in his head, plus experiencing other stresses in his cranium. In spite of the confusion he suffered from, his creative nature helped him to cope with the disorder. In fact, he became more productive in his writings after the disorder struck than he had previously. Writing rejuvenated him, and though he had to take medication, he coped well enough that he didn't have to spend time in a mental hospital. In fact, some years ago, he wrote a 524-page analytical history of his dealings with schizophrenia. At the present time, he resides with Teresa in Emerald Cottage in Bayou Pigeon.
