The premise of Soul Stirrings begins with Author Joyce Joyce Coleman experiencing an epiphany as she lectures a group of high school students at Buena Park high school in Orange County, California. Coleman, at the time a corporate officer at Trans World Airlines (TWA), had been brought in as a motivational speaker and expert in customer service. She found that her young audience was unimpressed with her credentials because they believed her to be just another "oreo" - black on the outside and white on the inside. Coleman won them over by returning to her authentic self, the person who grew up in rural, pre-civil rights Mississippi and walked over two miles each way to school at a one-room schoolhouse.

Coleman's return to her roots and remembering the land, love, laughter, and sorrow of her youth led her to write Soul Stirrings, twenty seamlessly interwoven stories about growing up in Mississippi during the 1950's. She magically transports her readers to Locust Hill, Mississippi, where she skips across rolling pastures near a gentle creek to her little schoolhouse, carrying her lunch in a tin molasses bucket. Alternate transporation were Ole Grey, Ole Billy, and Ole Red, a trio of horses that made the two plus mile trek to Belmont Public School easier and faster than on foot.

Readers will delight in the richness of characters like Elsie, John Willie, partiarchic Papa, and the indomitable Miss Lula. They will learn about the social life and customs of the times as kinfold from up-North Chicago travel back and forth to McComb, Mississippi on the City of New Orleans train, bringing care packages of store-bought clothes to Locust Hill and carrying boxes of country food back to Chicago.

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