About Jeffrey
Jeffrey W. Massey
Southern
Novelist
and
Storyteller
Biography
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Jeffrey W. Massey was born in Dothan, Alabama, on September 9, 1966, to parents John and Shirley Massey. Brought up in a middle-class American family, his father worked in the paper industry and his mother was employed by a short-line railroad. His formative years were spent in the small hamlet of Ashford, only a few short miles from where he was born. Massey began attending Ashford Academy, a small, rural, private school in the first grade and continued his primary education there until graduation in 1985. Massey played football, basketball, and baseball while in school, and his earliest attempts at writing were the journals he kept during this period, recording his thoughts and feelings on his small town and fellow students. These observations would provide insight into some of the characters Massey would use in his later writing.
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During the fall of 1989, Mr. Massey’s mother was diagnosed with acute, myelogenous leukemia, eventually succumbing to the illness in September of 1990. Taking a year off from college to spend time with his dying mother, Mr. Massey experienced a real turning point in his life. The emotional connections, views, and opinions formed during that year greatly shaped his outlook on the world, and still cast a heavy influence over his writing after thirty-five years.
During May of 1995, Massey married Susan Bohlert Ramsey, and the following year the pair had their only child together, Bohlert “Bo” Massey. In 1997, the Massey family relocated to the Seagrove/Grayton Beach area of Florida, along Florida’s pristine Emerald Coast. There, the couple established Bohlert Massey Domestic Art & Interiors, an interior design firm and furniture showroom in Grayton Beach. Named for their daughter, it is Bo Massey who successfully operates the business today.
The years 2007-09 were very tough, as the U.S. experienced the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and the housing market all but collapsed. This issue, along with several others, caused the Masseys to divorce in 2009 after thirteen years together. No longer married, Mr. Massey moved to the eastern shore of Mobile Bay for a time, and then moved to Sun Valley, Idaho. It was during these two periods that Mr. Massey began writing in earnest -
Graduating from Ashford Academy in 1985, Massey attended Wallace Community College in Dothan, Alabama, for two semesters before enrolling at The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in the fall of 1986. He studied in the College of Communication, majoring in Advertising with a minor in Marketing. He received his diploma in 1991, with the completion of his studies interrupted for one year by the death of his mother.
It was while in college that Massey’s ideas concerning prose first became something of a serious desire. Befriended by William Dobbs, the owner of Lodwick Adams Books, a small, independent bookstore located within the historic section of Tuscaloosa, Massey began working there part-time, while absorbing a great deal about the art of writing and the importance of literature, specifically the Southern variety. Mr. Adams, a retired Marine who was unwavering in his support Southern literature, was the first to introduce Mr. Massey to the works of important writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Barry Hannah, Harry Crews, Winston Groom, Pat Conroy, and his personal favorite Larry Brown. Their long talks together at the bookstore lit a fire somewhere inside Mr. Massey that still burns today.
Novels Synopsis
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Standing Too Soon was Jeffrey W. Massey’s debut novel. Published in 2014, it follows protagonist Brook Miller as he tries to come to terms with the robbery and attempted murder of his childhood friend Josh Mackintosh. It turns out to be a ghost from Miller’s past that initiated the sordid crime, and it is up to Josh to right the wrong. The story is set on a modern, fictional plantation in southeast Alabama, on the beaches of Grayton Beach, Florida, and on the semi-tropical island of Spanish Cay in the central Bahamas.
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Massey’s last novel was entitled The Rehabsand was published by Ex Animo Press in 2024. The story follows a group of men and women who have entered an alcohol and drug treatment facility. The book draws on the extensive life experiences of Mr. Massey, as he battled alcoholism for more than two decades before finally getting sober in December of 2020. The Rehabs is as hard-hitting as it is profound, and Mr. Massey pulls no punches in fashioning a story that gives the reader a clear and vivid picture of the man or woman stricken with substance abuse.
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His next effort was To Live Again, was published in 2018, and was republished by Ex Animo Press in the fall of 2023. The story follows real estate developer Carter Fleming as he tries to steer clear of an embarrassing affair that almost wrecked his company and his marriage. Carter seems to be battling everything and everyone until his life takes a completely unexpected turn, causing him to rethink his position in the world. Through trials and tribulations Carter comes to realize that the only real value in life comes from the personal relationships developed with friends and family. Sadly, it takes almost losing everything before we are humbled enough to realize this simple truth.
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In the fall of 2024, Mr. Massey began work on Reata, a story that follows the protagonist of the same name as he becomes embroiled in the Seminole War of 1817-18. After the warring Red Stick Indians were defeated at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), many of the survivors relocated in Spanish Florida, along the lower Chattahoochee River Valley. Reata follows the aftermath of the famous Scott Massacre, where a large force of Seminole and Red Stick warriors attacked a U.S. Army supply vessel traveling up the Apalachicola River. While Jean Louis “Reata” Breneaux is enlisted to help the U.S. 7th Infantry in subduing the Red Sticks and Seminoles, his primary objective is the recovery of an American woman held prisoner. The book is loosely based on the story of Elizabeth Stewart, who was captured after the Scott Massacre and held prisoner by hostile Indians until the U.S. Army was able to free her.
