Bettye B. Burkhalter

Bettye Burrell Burkhalter is a Vice President, Associate Provost, and Professor Emerita at Auburn University. Academic research and fellowships with Auburn University, the International Academy of Astronautics, and the British Interplanetary Society sent her around the world. Upon retirement she teamed with her eighty-nine-year-old father, Cecil A. Burrell, to capture a way of life they both loved and valued quickly fading into the pages of time: country style living.

Spanning four centuries, the saga is a testament to the author's uncompromising vision to recapture the life and times of one man and his family in search of the American Dream. Bringing to life the colorful characters who blazed trails into the raw frontier, some critics compared her meticulously researched writing and techniques of creative nonfiction to the writings of Kenneth Roberts and Bernard DeVoto.

Although Bettye worked and visited in over a dozen countries, she prefers the quiet countryside at her rustic log home retreat. There in the peace and quiet of nature she does most of her writing. "There is no substitute for awakening to a sunrise with singing birds, hearing a whippoorwill's lonesome call to his mate at dusk, or watching lightning bugs flash by on a warm summer night," she explains. Bettye and her husband, Boyd, have two daughters and one granddaughter.  They also live in Auburn, Alabama.