Byron Herbert Reece  Byron Herbert Reece (September 14, 1917 – June 3, 1958) was an American author of poetry and novels. During his life, he published four volumes of poetry and two volumes of fiction. Reece wrote the words of his legacy in four lines:  Born in Union County, Georgia on September 14, 1917, Reece began publishing poems locally while in high school, receiving his first widespread publication in 1943 with the publication of "Lest the Lonesome Bird" in the "Prairie Schooner" journal. "Ballad of the Bones and Other Poems", collecting Reece's poetry, soon followed, in 1945. He published "Bow Down in Jericho", his 1950 follow-up to that first, critically acclaimed publication. That same year, Reece published "Better a Dinner of Herbs", his first novel. In 1952, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction. 1952 also saw a third volume of poetry, "A Song of Joy", while 1955 brought his second novel, "The Hawk and the Sun" and his final volume of poetry, "The Season of Flesh". On June 3, 1958, Reece committed suicide at the age of forty, responding to illness and depression. During his final years, Reece also taught classes at Young Harris College to earn extra money. He was found in his office, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart playing on the record player and his final set of student papers graded and neatly stacked in the desk drawer. In a career cut short by illness and suicide, Byron Herbert Reece produced an enduring body of poetry and fiction from the sounds and spirits of his North Georgia homeland. His five volumes of verse draw deeply from the lyrical wellsprings of Nature and the Bible, twin legacies of an upbringing in the agricultural uplands of Union County, around Blairsville. His two novels, in turn, are remarkable regional portraits - one a mountain family drama of overland journey to Old Testament rhythms, the other a morality play of a small-town lynching. Reece was a bright and solitary schoolboy, a graduate of Blairsville High School who grew up in such rural isolation, the story goes, that he never saw a car until he was eight or twelve (depending on the version). He attended Young Harris College and taught school intermittently between 1935 and 1942, producing poem after poem for small journals and newspapers even while his parents’ tuberculoses led him to take increasing responsibility for the family farm.