Jack "Jackie" Anderson was born in 1949 and grew up on Tybee Island, Georgia, near the Tybee lighthouse. He attended the old wooden school on Butler Avenue and then the new Tybee School when it was finished. He enjoyed fishing, hunting, camping, and looking for historic relics on Tybee and on the islands north and south of Tybee, particularly Little Tybee. Jack started working as a lifeguard at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in the summers and attended nearby Coastal Carolina College and then the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He met and married Mavis Lane Eaton and moved to Atlanta and raised four children. He worked as a carpenter, then a custom home builder, and furniture designer/builder. He returned to the Low Country in 2005 and spent a few years on Daufuskie restoring several buildings: a Gullah cottage (the Sarah Grant House), the Jane Hamilton School, and the Maryfield School (where Pat Conroy taught). Currently, Jack lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife, Mavis. His interests are art, boating, Low Country history and architecture, organic gardening, and poodles.

Inside these pages lies an epic tale, hidden in metaphorical clay vessels, hidden in word of mouth. Set on Tybee Island, Little Tybee Island, Savannah, Georgia, and Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, it is the story of the remarkable Milam family. In the era before the Civil War, this family saw all human beings as their brothers. They were opposed to slavery, and they anguished over the displacement of the Indians of the region. But they worked in the system of their day. Over generations they saved runaway slaves and sustained hidden enclaves of Guale Indians. Those Indians themselves heroically helped runaways adjust to hidden and harsh environments and became links on the Underground Railroad.
Author Jack Anderson grew up on Tybee Island in the shadow of the lighthouse which features prominently in the story. He knows of what he speaks: the creeks, the rivers, the tides, the watercraft, the winds and waves that are the pulse of the Milam family's adventure. He knows the souls of the White folks, the Indians, the Gullah-Geechee who come alive in this story of bravery and sacrifice and triumph.