Alabama is fortunate to have many new young authors.

Joshua (Josh) Sipper is a member of a talented family of music-makers, story-tellers, and song writers.

Josh is a seventh-generation Sipper (Skipper, Scipper) whose family still lives on land settled in 1860 in what is now Crenshaw County.

John Skipper settled the land after moving from South Carolina to Alabama. He brought with him his wife, Tsalahi (Sally) Hinote, who was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. Family history says she was the only child of a Cherokee chieftan.

Josh has mixed family stories with fiction to spin the story of a missing 3-year-old boy who disappeared from his home, which was a short distance from the Patsaliga River where Indians camped. In his new novel Runaway Swimmer, he tells a saga of heartaches and triumphs for the Skipper family as they mourn the disappearance of George Washington Skipper during the period before the Trail of Tears until after the Civil War.

Runaway Swimmer will have you asking family members, “Is this true or is it fiction?” The story spans several generations of the family and makes good reading for anyone from ages 9 to 90.

Sipper will hold a book signing at 61 on Main in downtown Luverne on Friday, October 2, from 3-5 p.m.