Author Jeff Barry's debut novel explores universal themes in a uniquely Southern way

TUPELO ? With a name that’s sure to turn the heads of Ole Miss football fans and their rivals, Jeff Barry’s debut novel, “Go to Hell Ole Miss,” is a dialogue-driven narrative that explores universal themes in a uniquely Southern way.

“It’s about a father’s willingness to do almost anything to protect his only daughter from the man he had pressured her to marry,” Barry said. “Almost.”

The story gives a voice to the tension between “hope and hardship, redemption and revenge, faith and doubt.”

Barry, 58, is a Memphis native who now lives in Chattanooga and has familial ties to north Mississippi. He stopped by Barnes & Noble in Tupelo to sign copies of the book last Saturday.

“Go to Hell Ole Miss” published on May 7 and made it into the Top 20 on USA TODAY’s Best-selling Booklist that month.

Despite the title, the book has nothing to do with the University of Mississippi or its football team. Instead, it’s derived from a war story his father, Warren Hood Barry, told.

A B-24 pilot in World War II, he was shot down on a mission. With two of the engines on fire, he ordered his crew to bail out. The plane’s altitude had dropped to 2,000 feet and there was no making it back to England, so he bailed out and was quickly captured by the Germans. That night, they locked him in a shed – not unlike the one on the cover of the book.

“He’d lost his plane, didn’t know what had happened to his crew, he’s a little bit injured, he’s lonely, scared, cold,” Barry said. “And what happened in that shed really gave him a lot of hope and ended up, ironically, being a redemptive story.”

He sat with his back against the shed wall. It was sturdy but had small cracks between the boards. As the sun rose behind him after a cold, lonely night, light shone through the boards and lit up the wall in front of him.

“Carved into that wall were the words ‘Go to Hell Ole Miss,’” Barry said. “Think of that. My dad’s from Memphis, he’s married to an Ole Miss co-ed and missing her. So he was very familiar with the term. The fact that what he’d assumed was a Mississippi State boy had the gumption, as he said it, to smuggle a knife past the Germans and then had the spirit to carve that into that wall, really gave him some humor, but also hope.”

Through difficult times in the war, that message, ironically, served as an inspiration to keep going.

Decades later, the phrase is now the title of his son’s novel – a book that has incorporated that story and others into the life of the fictional protagonist, Big John.

Art imitates life

Barry has deep roots in the hill country of Northeast Mississippi. For a time, he lived on a small cattle farm on the Tennessee-Mississippi line after graduating from Vanderbilt University and has worked in the real estate and farmland business in the area for decades.

He was passing through downtown Holly Springs for work, waiting on a red light to change, when the idea for the book hit him. He wound up basing the fictional town of Hope Springs on Holly Springs and the family farm on his own.

“You can’t help but consciously or subconsciously come back to your experiences and memories,” Barry said of writing.

“There are some stories in there that are pretty much verbatim true stories from experiences I’ve had or others I know,” he added. “There are some lines that are verbatim, like what I heard from my mom, some of the funny lines like ‘Your “I do” is a lot more important than your IQ.’”

Other plot lines and character traits simply came from his imagination.

“Being in the land business, it presented a treasure trove of interesting, fascinating characters,” Barry said. “I’ve been around quite a few, and I’ve been called a character myself.”

The book is dialogue-heavy because that’s the way he grew up hearing stories told, and readers have complimented the book’s authentic voice and sense of place, he said.

About writing

Though he just published his first book, Barry has been writing for decades.

As a child, he often tagged along with his dad and his WWII buddies on trips. On one particular trip to Mexico, they were with local cowboys on a ranch near the jungle.

“I heard they were going on a wild boar hunt in the jungle the next day,” Barry recalled. “I asked my dad and he said, ‘Yeah, you can go.’ I’m about 13 years old, and next thing I know, I find myself tagging along with these guys.”

When they got home, Barry’s father encouraged him to write down the story.

“I started doing that on all our trips, and then I journaled a lot through the years,” Barry said.

All of his writing was done privately until about 15 years ago when he started a blog that led to people suggesting he should write a book.

After his Holly Springs epiphany, he got to work on the project that would become “Go to Hell Ole Miss.”

“I didn’t know what in the world went into writing a novel,” Barry said. “I’d always loved to write, but if I’d known what it took to write a novel, and at least write in the way I wanted it to be, I might’ve thought again about it.”

Over the span of eight years, Barry penned the book. He wrote most of it while he was outdoors, a fact made apparent by the vivid descriptions of nature weaved into the narrative.

“I would basically write pretty intensively in the spring and fall, when the weather is better,” Barry said.

He’d often take writing trips, finding he could get as much done in a four-day trip as he could in a month while also juggling the rest of his life. In alternating seasons, he’d have people read his drafts to receive feedback before going back to work.

“I loved the process,” Barry said. “I fell in love with writing the book. I fell in love with these characters.”

After nearly a decade of writing, he was ready to share “Go to Hell Ole Miss” with the world and began the process that led to it being published this year.

His years of work culminated in a character-focused book that he hopes will have an affect on readers’ lives.

“My goal, my hope from the start, has been to write a book of substance and characters that become people who make you laugh, cry and think,” Barry said.

For more information about “Go to Hell Ole Miss” and to keep up with the latest from Jeff Barry, follow him on Instagram and Facebook or visit jeff-barry.com.