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(Black PR Wire) In the 1950s Jim Crow Mississippi Delta, where cotton is king and sharecropping has staunchly replaced slavery, McCoy captures the struggles of a family surviving poverty, racism, and sporadic hopelessness.

If the young main character in this book could write well, he would have written it. However, it is 1955 and school is a special treat primarily black children, who are unskilled "cotton pickers" or physically unable to work in the cotton fields. When a father suddenly disappears from a young boy's life, a new role is carved out for Arthur as he struggles through life's challenges. In the meantime, his colorful, hard-working, sharecropper mother unskilled focused on maintaining a roof over her family's heads on the Hobbs plantation. As Arthur, nicknamed Bird's family moved from shotgun house to shotgun house, the personal stories of characters in and out of their lives are painful at times and joyous and funny at other moments. Bird daydreams about the day his daddy will return. Finally, God teaches him how to fly above poverty, pain, many injustices, and a longing for his father's love and closeness.

Every day that his grieving mother went to work was a day for him to ponder the impacts of being the "man" of the house and more time to explore and become frustrated about why his father was missing when he would return and just where in God's name was, he! "Fatherless" is not the typical sob story of a child who grew up without a dad. In "Fatherless," author Larry McCoy takes us on a journey through the day-to-day existence of a sharecropping family in the Mississippi Delta. He does so through an abandoned child's eyes and manages to stay true to the 1950's dialect and authentic culture. Peppered with stories of humor, history, pain and life lessons, "Fatherless" reveals the private thoughts of a young boy as he grows in coping with loss and begins to focus on the hopes and opportunities of each new day. In the Deep South, the 1950s were thick with down-home blues, racism, sweat, cotton, tobacco, and mosquitos with just a touch of tenderness. To Arthur, none of that was as crucial as finding his daddy.

McCoy is a retired businessman, youth coach, and teacher. Born and raised near the mighty Mississippi River amidst the cotton fields of Bolivar County, he now lives in Central Mississippi. He continues to travel the magnolia state's back roads, capturing photographic records of remains of its iconic blues and juke joints. Listening to stories of elders throughout the Delta inspired McCoy's creative efforts to writing. McCoy often carries his passion for karaoke to music joints and events to small towns throughout Mississippi. His other works include The Last of the Mississippi Juke Joints. Pending book releases include "The Love Family Reunion," "The Robbery on the Pee Vine Track," "Done Got Over," and "The Trial."

Fatherless is available in numerous bookstores, online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Books A Million, Baker & Taylor, Walmart and via iBook, The Book Company, Kobo, and other bookselling localities. The E-Book generally sells for less than $7.00, and the paperback is less than $21.00 plus shipping.