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Author. Screenwriter. Playwright. Historian. Genealogist. Bon vivant boulevardier. Newspaper columnist. To browse the several hundred books Perry Deane Young has for sale on Amazon.com, go to: http://www.amazon.com/shops/woodfinson Interact with Perry on his blog: http://perryyoung.blogspot.com Perry on Wikipedia Interviews & articles
 Announcing the publication of a new edition of: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FRANKIE SILVER By Perry Deane Young "Perry Deane Young provides important historical background to this fascinating story…Young is able to build suspense, even for a story many of his readers may already know…By personalizing both Frankie Silver’s story and his own search for it, Young has given readers an interesting and well-written book about history and the way it is created.” --Lynn Moss Sanders in Appalachian Journal "Most of my life I’ve heard stories about a pretty mountain lady who was hanged for nothing more serious than murdering her husband. Here, and I can say at last after one and a half centuries, is the true account, thoroughly researched and beautifully presented. It’s a high-road journey into this Appalachian mystery." --John Ehle, author of The Land Breakers, The Road, The Journey of August King "As a direct descendant of Frankie Silver (She was my G-G-Grandmother) I have heard the story all my life, but learned many new facts about the case in this book… A thoroughly researched book that debunks many of the myths surrounding the hanging of Frankie Silver. Good reading for history buffs and a MUST for family members." Paul Parker, Amazon.com. "Perry Deane Young has taken one of the best-known stories, legends, ballads of the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains and reconstructed Frankie Silver's murder of her husband in December 1831, and her public hanging in July, 1833, as close to the truth as thoughtful research makes possible. His detailed record of that research reveals a model of professional and personal perseverance that adds a new dimension to an old and riveting tragedy. --Wilma Dykeman, author of The French Broad and The Far Family. "Of all the tales of tragedy to emerge from the mists of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, none has been more enduring than that of the death of Charles Silver at the hands of his wife, Frances Stuart. Unfortunately, it has accumulated exaggeration and error much as a snowball hurtling down the slope is covered with debris. Only in recent days have efforts been made to peer behind the veneer of distortion and discover the truth. Perry Deane Young has not only been ideally situated to uncover the long hidden and neglected documentation, but also had the expertise in research and the literary skill to bring the facts to expression. At long last Frankie has an advocate with whom she would be pleased." --Lloyd Bailey, professor of Old Testament History at Duke University, author of Heritage of the Toe River Valley. "Young Frances Silver's ax murder of her husband in the Appalachian mountains in 1831 and her subsequent hanging was the subject of a novel by Sharyn McCrumb earlier this year, The Ballad of Frankie Silver. Young, a veteran reporter, has sifted actual documents to chronicle and correct the facts about a fascinating case surrounded by myth." --Nancy Pate, The Orlando Sentinel "This book is thoroughly researched and clearly written… One of several books published recently on the Frankie Silver story, this one is likely to stimulate renewed interest in the case among scholars and others." -- Al Stewart, Our State “There are many stories about Frankie Silver. The best book I have seen on the subject is The Untold Story of Frankie Silver by Perry Deane Young…This is perhaps the true account of this old tragedy… A novel, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, by Sharyn McCrumb is a very popular telling of the story…I believe the Young book to be the more authentic telling of the story." -- Mary Jane Simmons on the Burke County Genealogy website  Perry Deane Young is the author of ten books, three plays and one screenplay. His tenth book, a new edition of Two of the Missing, Remembering Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, was published in 2009 by Press53. The new book contains 18 pages of photos by and of Flynn and Stone and a new chapter updating the ongoing search for them. 
Two of the Missing is a Vietnam memoir, focused on the lives and disappearance April 6, 1970 in Cambodia of Young’s close friends, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone. Movie rights have been optioned every year since the story first appeared in Harper’s Magazine in December of 1972.Ralph Hemecker and Mythic Films currently hold the movie rights to Two of the Missing. Hemecker has been a director of numerous successful television series, most recently of Blue Bloods starring Tom Selleck. Hemecker also directed several episodes of the X-Files and Millineum series. He was director and executive producer of the Witch Blade series. Hemecker and Young collaborated on the screenplay based on Young’s book. The David Kopay Story, which Young wrote with David Kopay, was on the New York Times bestseller list for 9 weeks in 1977. The book was also named one of the Ten Best Books for Young Adults of 1977 by the American Library Association. In 2002, former NFL lineman Esera Tuaolo said reading the book had saved him from committing suicide when he was struggling with his own homosexuality. 
Young’s other books include: God’s Bullies which was published in 1982 by Holt, Rinehart & Co.; A Killing Cure, published in 1985 by Henry Holt & Co.; The Insider’s Guide to California, published in 1990 by Hunter Publishing Co., Lesbians and Gays and Sports, part of a series for young adults edited by the distinguished historian, Martin Duberman, published in 1994 by Chelsea House; The Untold Story of Frankie Silver, published in 1988 by Down Home Press and later reissued by Iuniverse, Hanged by a Dream, self published in July of 2005 by Iuniverse; Our Young Family, published in January of 2004 by The Overmountain Press. The latter is a family history with more than 15,000 names, hundreds of photographs and an array of stories, documents, legends and real-life dramas, including 13 murder stories. 
Perry Deane Young is also the author of three plays, all written in collaboration with William Gregg, artistic director of the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre at Mars Hill, N.C.: Frankie, Mountain of Hope, Home Again.In August of 2001, the world premiere of the play, Frankie, was presented at the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre at Mars Hill College, Mars Hill, N.C. The play was written by SART director, Bill Gregg, and Perry Deane Young and was based on Young’s book, The Untold Story of Frankie Silver. The play, Frankie, has now been published in book form and is available from the authors. [See Books.] The second play by Perry Young and Bill Gregg had its premiere July 7, 2004 at Mars Hill. This was Mountain of Hope, a drama based on the life and death of UNC Prof. Elisha Mitchell, for whom the highest mountain in eastern America is named. The third play in this collaboration was Home Again, the story of Thomas Wolfe’s desperate conflicts with his art, love and family. This play was presented in July and August of 2009 at SART. Born March 27, 1941 on a farm in Woodfin, near Asheville, N.C., Young is the son of Robert Finley and Rheba Maphry Tipton Young. He graduated from Woodfin Low School, Erwin High School and attended the University of North Carolina off and on from 1959-1965. As a student, he wrote 15 different articles for the New York Times Travel section. Articles he wrote for the Chapel Hill Weekly on the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society won him a first place award in the Hearst Foundation’s competition for college journalists that year. In 1993, Young returned to UNC-Chapel Hill and earned his B.A. in Mass Communications, with a minor in American history. From his student days, he worked on newspapers in Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, and Chapel Hill, N.C. He also worked for United Press International in Raleigh in 1963 and in New York in 1967. In January, 1968, he went to Vietnam on assignment for UPI, arriving in Saigon the night before the Tet Offensive began. In 1970, he worked for the New York Post in New York and in Beirut and Cairo. Since 1970, Young has published articles in numerous national magazines and newspapers. These include The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Harper’s, Ms., Rolling Stone, Penthouse, Cosmopolitan, The Advocate, Washingtonian, Saturday Review, The Chicago Journalism Review, The Quill. A columnist for the Chapel Hill Herald and the Asheville Citizen-Times from 1996-2003, his articles now appear in The Independent and can be found in the archives at indyweek.com/durham/authors/perrydeaneyoung.html In 2005, Perry Deane Young presented all of his personal and professional papers from his long career as an author and journalist to the Southern Historical Collection of Manuscripts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A guide to the papers is available at www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/y/Young,Perry_Deane.html. Perry Deane Young is available to speak to school and civic groups on any of the many topics he has written about in his long career as a journalist, author and playwright. Michael Congdon Don Congdon Associates 156 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010-7002 Telephone: 212-645-1229 FAX: 212-727-2688 E-mail: dca@doncongdon.com HOME • COMMENTARY • BOOKS • PLAYS • CONTACT 
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