Eli, Sometimes

At the end of the nineteenth century, in the small town of Trinity, Kansas, on the edge of the West, fourteen-year-old Eli is newly orphaned. With his mother's funeral barely concluded, the judgmental Reverend Mr. Ellis and his congregation of Trinitarians turn him out of his home. But Eli quickly discovers that he is not all alone in the world as a group of kind townspeople help him find a new home and build a prospering business, becoming not just his friends but his "sometimes" family. John Turpin's ELI, SOMETIMES is charmingly old-fashioned, funny, and heartwarming.



John Clayton Turpin was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1928. After serving in the Air Force during the Korean War, he attended Southwestern at Memphis College (later Rhodes College) on the GI Bill. John became the registrar at Southwestern in 1956 and retired twenty-five years later. As registrar, he was more than a manager of academic records and registration, he was an unofficial mentor to many of the students. At his death, one student wrote, "He was one of my life heroes. He set the bar high, and we are all better for having known him."