STARKVILLE — A few years ago, Dr. J. Stephen Beam and his wife, Dawn, made arrangements for their future headstone.

Next to his wife’s name were five titles: wife, mother, lawyer, judge and Mississippi Supreme Court justice. Next to his name were four: husband, father, teacher and physician.

“There’s a little space under mine,” Beam said. “Hers is all filled up.”

But on Thursday afternoon, Beam joked with the Friends of the Starkville Public Library that his side of the headstone is now also full. As of 2023, he was able to add “author” next to his name thanks to his new thriller novel “The Death Letter.”

But the road to the “author” title started with humble beginnings.

Beam said he grew up in Itawamba County in poverty, in a house with cracks in the floor and the walls that his mother stuffed with blue jeans and old clothes. All around the house, there were books scattered on every available surface, though they didn’t have any bookshelves.

When he was in the fifth or sixth grade, Beam picked up his first longer book to read, “The Black Stallion.” From there, he picked up the reading and writing bug.

“One of the things that struck me, and I can remember thinking this, was ‘this is almost like magic,’” Beam said.

Throughout his childhood and adolescence, Beam wrote his first stories. He kept writing no matter what else he was doing throughout his life, including writing novels, but he never tried to publish anything.

“I didn’t have courage,” Beam said. “It takes courage to put something you’ve written out there to read and dissect and say, ‘why on earth do you think anyone would read this?’”

Instead of pursuing writing, Beam went to college to become a science teacher. After graduation, he taught at Hattiesburg High School for seven years, before being accepted to go to medical school in April 1980.

After graduating from University of Mississippi Medical Center, Beam spent more than three decades working as a doctor, though he never felt it was exactly his calling. He called it a “blessing,” but when it was time to retire, he finally decided to write the novel, “The Death Letter.”

The first scene of the book, Beam said, came to him after the death of one of his two beloved black labs, Noel and Norman. After Noel was hit by a car and passed away, Beam brought him back to his farm and personally dug a grave for him under a tree.

“That happened a year before I started thinking about writing the book,” Beam said. “But that was in my mind. How am I going to start a book? I wasn’t sure. But I was going to try to write something. So I wrote that scene. But I populated it with two people that I’ve never met, except in my head.”

“The Death Letter” focuses on protagonist Jesse Thomas, a former soldier who fought in Iraq. During that time, Jesse writes a letter just in case he dies at war, though he ends up making it through the conflict.

Eventually, Jesse returns home to the fictional county “Tombigbee County” in Mississippi. He marries a woman named Mary and reenters normal life. But when his wife Mary disappears, along with their dog, Jesse struggles to figure out what happened to them.

Beam published the book with Dogwood Press in August, he said, and he has since been working on three more books he hopes to publish in the near future.

“This is not a one-off for me,” Beam said. “This is my third occupation.”

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