Jim Thorpe never slept in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the town formerly known as Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk. But through a combination of ambition, necessity, and sheer luck, these small towns became the final resting place of the great American Indian Olympic champion, and in 1954 they legally changed their name to permanently commemorate his burial. "Jim Thorpe Never Slept Here", a treasury of tales from a 1950s boyhood in a town surrounded by the mountains of the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region, is a passport to a lost land of childhood adventure, featuring an ancient river, old mine shafts, canal locks, hobo camps, the remains of millionaires' mansions - and the hilarious antics of Richard Benyo and his buddies in the South Street Gang.This memoir brings the 1950s alive - just as "Our Gang" did for the Depression - with its renderings of afternoons spent with baseball cards, cardboard forts, BB guns, playground bullying, and that first illicit sip of beer. "Jim Thorpe Never Slept Here" is a memorable, nostalgic account of all the trials, tribulations, and the rites of passage of growing up in postwar America.

Leap of Faith

by Richard Benyo

Published 1 September 2009
Eastern Pennsylvania during the 1950s: King Coal has been dethroned, the railroads are all but defunct, and the region is in an economic depression. Fathers are forced to commute many miles to work, while at home the kids know no other pastime but to run wild in the woods. From the same author who intrigued readers with his whimsical stories of childhood in "Jim Thorpe Never Slept Here" comes an all-new batch of coming-of-age tales in "Leap of Faith". In these eight stories, the adults are often offstage, leaving the children to make up the rules as they go. From the story of an unrepentant bully who gets more than he deserves to the tale of a boy who finds serenity in short bursts of flight, Richard Benyo captures a time and a place where small triumphs are enormous, where the strong rule and the swift survive, and where the outside world - beyond the mountains that enclose Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania - seldom intrudes.