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account of jAMES JONES and SPLENDIDLY ECCENTRIC cast garners honors from the illinois state historical society   The Southern Illinois University Press publication James Jones and the Handy Writers’ Colony received a Certificate of Excellence from the Illinois State Historical Society. The award will be presented to authors George Hendrick, Helen Howe, and Don Sackrider during the Society’s 103rd annual meeting, held in Springfield in May 2002.   James Jones and the Handy Writers’ Colony (180 pages, $19.95 paper) is the story of one of the most unusual writing colonies anywhere, any time. A first-rate human interest story, the book is also a valuable folk history of the Handy Colony for writers in Marshall, Illinois, its founders, Lowney and Harry Handy, and its star pupil, James Jones.   Even before his wound at Guadalcanal landed him in a Memphis hospital in 1943, Jones suffered profound personal tragedy: he experienced Pearl Harbor, his mother died, and his father killed himself. Lost, aimless, Jones drank heavily, often picking bar fights. A concerned aunt took him to see Lowney Handy, an unpublished and unconventional writing teacher who virtually controlled his life. Lowney and her husband Harry (a local oil refinery superintendent who supplied the cash) took Jones into their home. Lowney, Jones’s writing teacher, soon became his lover.   Lowney instructed young writers to copy the works of successful writers before she let them begin their own works. It was an eccentric theory that gained credibility because of Jones’s fabulous success with From Here to Eternity and Some Came Running. James Jones and the Handy Writers’ Colony is the story of the colony, which continued until Lowney’s death in 1964, even though Jones withdrew his financial support when he and Lowney ceased to be lovers. It was a dangerous break-up: When Jones married the beautiful Gloria Mosolino, Lowney tried to stab the bride with a knife.   In James Jones and the Handy Writers’ Colony, the right authors tell a fascinating story: Helen Howe knew all of the people in the colony, Don Sackrider was the second student at the colony, and George Hendrick edited Jones’s letters. Sackrider is a pilot and Howe and Hendrick have academic credentials. They have at their disposal a splendidly eccentric cast of characters, from Jones and Lowney Handy on down.   Last year, the State Historical Society also presented awards to three other Southern Illinois University Press publications: Tell Us a Story: An African American Family in the Heartland by Shirley Motley Portwood, Escape Betwixt Two Suns: A True Tale of the Underground Railroad in Illinois by Carol Pirtle, and The Little Theatre on the Square: Four Decades of a Small-Town Equity Theatre by Beth Conway Shervey. All three books, along with James Jones and the Handy Writers’ Colony, are available from Southern Illinois University Press (800-346-2680, www.siu.edu/~siupress). More marketing news