Ever since young Brian discovered his first arrowhead, he knew that he wanted to be an archaeologist. There was just something about holding an object that had been created by someone from an earlier civilization that spoke to him. The story begins as Brian, on one of his frequent field trips, discovers an old half-breed Indian woman. Completely self-sufficient and content with her circumstances in life, Keechie teaches him the skills of survival, along with a love and appreciation of the natural and supernatural worlds. The survival skills learned from Keechie prove to be the difference between life and death many years after her death for Brian and his own family in the final chapters of this story. It begins in rural Georgia in the 1950s-a shameful time of racial bigotry and segregation of the races, contrasted by being referred to as the "Age of Innocence."
Phil Whitley was born on January 1, 1943 in his maternal grandparent's home in the rural, unincorporated town of Pine Mountain Valley, Georgia. His father at the time was serving in the South Pacific theatre of World War II.
After graduating from Harris County High School in 1961, he attended Columbus Area Technical School where he received an A.S. Degree in Electronics Technology.
Upon graduation, the war in Viet Nam was in full deployment. Vision problems deferred him from military service, so he served his country by working with the Civil Service Commission at Robins Air Force Base, Warner Robins, Georgia where he built and installed bomber navigation radar systems in the B-52 and F-111 aircraft.
After almost six years of working with the military, he then spent the next thirty years in the healthcare field (paying that karmic debt). Still applying his electronics skills, he maintained over five thousand pieces of medical equipment at Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale, Georgia. Upon his retirement, he was able to devote his attention to his writing career.
Ever since his childhood in Pine Mountain Valley, Phil had nurtured a dream of writing about the people who had once occupied the area. When he found his first arrowhead, he was hooked. The area had been the ancient home and hunting grounds of Native Americans, but they left little evidence of their occupation. A few earthen mounds, potsherds and projectile points were the only evidence of an age past--that and the many place names that still bear the influence of the Muscogulge/Creek language.
As a child, Phil spent most of his free time roaming the banks of nearby creeks and rivers and the valleys between the two mountains looking for the artifacts of these enigmatic people, trying to imagine the lives they lived.
His first novel, Keechie, was the product of that imagination. Although written as a stand-alone, Granny Boo ~ Legacy of the Puma Man continues the story, going back in time to Keechie's ancestors while continuing the lives of Brian and his family - as they struggle to survive in Keechie's cave.
