This is a beautifully crafted novel with a cover beautiful enough to frame. I wish I knew Uncle Bill. He's a cowboy through and through, but he has a kind heart that makes women love him and children flock to him. He writes his memoirs on yellow legal pads and leaves them for the daughter of his boss to read. In those pages, the reader learns about his marriages, the woman he didn't marry but loved the best. and the women friends he shielded from near calamity. I'm a sucker for past and present day stories of the West, and I loved reading the poetic descriptions of the mountains, the sun, the sky.
      ~ Lou the Librarian

The Story is the Thing by Amy Hale Auker is one of the loveliest, most beautifully written, and deeply sensitive books I've read in ages.
      The story line involves ranch owners, workers, and others written about on a series of yellow writing pads by William Morgan before his death, and read by Katy, an heir to the ranch. The action switches from the notebooks to actual accounts by each of the main characters named in the writings. At its heart, Uncle Bill is the one who knows and relates to all of them. The sense of place—the ranches in Arizona—becomes a central character as well.
      Bill is not your stereotypical cowboy. He reads, writes, plays his fiddle and, in his notebooks, displays a beautiful soul. His love, wisdom, and amazing goodness, make him one of the most outstanding characters I've read about in quite a while.
      The story is not all sweetness and light; after all, it's about life. Bill writes searingly and honestly of his mistakes and grave errors of judgment. By the end of the novel, I knew and liked most of those presented and wished I could have known Uncle Bill Morgan.
      ~ Helene Benardo, at Story Circle Book Reviews

Chances taken, love lost, lessons learned, life moves on. The Story Is the Thing is the third book written by Amy Hale Auker and with each book her writing gets better, her words more lyrical, her story more heart-felt, more poignant. This book is written like a love letter.
      It seems I've known a man like Uncle Bill before and I'll bet you did too and that is what is wonderful about this book that we can find people we know in each of the characters. Julia is the spirited outsider trying to find her place and Charlie is the cowboy-girl who lives a life harder than most but only wants simple love like everyone else. Cody Jack is the type we've all heard about or known, the type we have no use for in this life. It's Uncle Bill who weaves the story together for us so we can understand a time and a place and a thing that happened, a thing that changed everything.       And all around Uncle Bill's story is the story of a lifestyle, a story of the land, a story of hardships accepted, of joy and of love held and lost.
      The author took a chance in the way she set her chapters and allowed her characters to reach out from the page but it was perfectly balanced with a beautifully smooth clarity to the reading.
      It's not hard for me to recommend The Story Is the Thing to you. I hope you pick it up and enjoy it as much as I did. Amy is fast becoming one of my favorite independent authors.
      ~ Maria Norcia Santillanes

This book is a wonderful story told by several different voices. It flows so well you change from voice (person) to voice with no problem. The story is the thing, without a doubt! I sat down to start it one evening and did not put it down until I finished. It is a story that grips your attention from the first chapter and holds it to the last page. Amy writes, whether its fiction or non fiction, in a poetic way that paints wonderful pictures. You see the country . . . you feel as if you've visited the places her stories take you to.
      This book stands alone . . . BUT, if you haven't read her non fiction Willa Award Winner, Rightful Place, and her novel, Winter Of Beauty . . . read them! Anything she writes grips you and holds you.  . . .  She is also a Cowboy Poet & you can find her poems in several books on her Amazon page.  . . .  She lives what she writes.  . . .  She has become my favorite author, and I read many good authors.  . . .  ~ C. Estill

Hear Amy talking about The Story Is the Thing on Food and Farm

     

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Amy Hale Auker writes and thrives on a ranch in Arizona where she is having a love affair with rock, mountains, piñon and juniper forests, the weather, and her songwriter husband who is also foreman of the ranch.
      She guides her readers to a place where the bats fly, lizards do pushups on the rocks, bears leave barefoot prints in the dirt. Where hummingbirds do rain dances in August, spiders weave for their food, and poetry is in the chrysalis and the cocoon.
      She tells stories about the real world where things grow up out of the ground, where the miracle of life happens over and over and over again, where people can and do survive without malls or Arby's.
      Amy believes that what you put out there is what you get back, and that if you do the good, hard work you will be rewarded.