Lewis “Buddy” Nordan created worlds that blended fiction and nonfiction, where a day on a lake in a small Mississippi town could be interrupted by a mermaid rising from the water.
His writing style could be called “magical realism,” Jamie Kornegay says.
Mr. Nordan drew inspiration for those scenes from Itta Bena, the Leflore County town where he spent his childhood.
“His books just really capture the mysticism and flair of the Delta,” said Kornegay, operator of Turnrow Book Co.
Mr. Nordan, 72, died of complications from pneumonia on Friday at University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
He had lived and taught creative writing in Pittsburgh, Pa., for many years before moving to a retirement community in Hudson, Ohio, two years ago as his health declined from peripheral neuropathy, a neurological disease, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Services will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Laurel Lake Retirement Community in Hudson, Ohio.
Mr. Nordan’s most well-known book was the 1993 novel “Wolf Whistle,” based on the murder of Emmett Till — a Chicago youth murdered after allegedly whistling at a white woman in Leflore County in 1955. Mr. Nordan wrote eight books in all, including a memoir, “Boy With Loaded Gun.”
Kornegay said many of Mr. Nordan’s books are out of print and said he hopes the writer’s death may encourage Mr. Nordan’s publisher, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, N.C., to republish them.
Mr. Nordan was born in Forest but moved to Itta Bena at a young age after his father died. His mother was a teacher and the sister of a well-known Itta Bena physician, Dr. Jesse Robert Hightower.
Curtis Aust of Itta Bena went to school with Mr. Nordan from first grade through their graduation from Leflore County High School in 1957. Aust said Mr. Nordan was smart and outgoing as a child.
They were friends, and Aust remembers spending the night at Mr. Nordan’s house and going duck hunting in the morning.
Aust played football, and Mr. Nordan was a team manager. During one blowout game, Mr. Nordan and the other team manager convinced the coach to let them play the second half, Aust said.
“That was the first time I’d ever seen them let the manager play,” he said.
Mr. Nordan returned regularly for class reunions in Itta Bena, Aust said.
“He would be the one that everybody would know and telling stories,” Aust said.
After high school, Mr. Nordan earned a bachelor’s degree at Millsaps College in Jackson, a master’s at Mississippi State University and a doctorate at Auburn University, and he taught writing.
But his life was difficult. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr. Nordan had been an alcoholic, lost a son at birth and divorced his first wife.
But he was sober by the time he joined the University of Pittsburgh’s English Department in 1983. Colleagues and students from Pitt remembered him as a warm mentor and an engaging and funny speaker, the newspaper said.
At the age of 45, Mr. Nordan published his first book, “Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair.” Arrow Catcher, a scene of much of his writing, was a fictional town based on Itta Bena.
Aust said he read one of Mr. Nordan’s books and could recognize people he knew.
Mr. Nordan’s second novel, “Wolf Whistle,” won the Southern Book Award; his last book was his memoir, published in 2000.
He retired from Pitt in 2005.
Mr. Nordan is survived by his second wife, Alicia Blessing Nordan; a son, Lewis E. Nordan of Gaithersburg, Md.; two stepsons, Josh Conn of State College and Adam Conn of Columbus, Ohio; and six grandchildren.
• Contact Charlie Smith at 581-7235 or csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.
