Blount Library Blog

In Memoriam: Retired Averett Professor Michael Hammonds (1942-2025)

Near the end of April 2025, novelist and teacher Michael Hammonds passed away at the age of 82.  For more than 20 years (1989-2010) Hammonds was a professor of English and Journalism at Averett University.

Over the course of his life, Hammonds published ten novels - five westerns and five thrillers:

• Concerning the Death of Charlie Bowman (1971)
• Among the Hunted (1973; aka Marshal of Bitterroot)
• One to Ride the River With (1974)
• A Gathering of Wolves (1975)
• Incident on the Way to a Killing (1977)
• The OPEC Objective (1981)
• Came a Spider (1989)
• The Burning Man (1991)
• Edge of Fear (1992)
• Edge of Terror (1993)

An eleventh novel - about a young Native American woman searching for her identity - was the favorite of both Hammonds and his wife Jenne.  Sadly, he was never able to find a publisher for the novel, presumably due to the fading popularity of westerns by the late 1970s.

In multiple interviews during his time at Averett, he described his writing process.  Hammonds, who picked up the writing bug at the ripe old age of ten, would typically wake at 4am in order to get some writing done before arriving on campus to teach.  Wearing headphones blasting "harsh" music (it is never revealed what the music actually was), he would try to put himself into the mindset of a serial killer - the typical subject of his later novels.  Hammonds would generate a plot outline, compose early chapters, and decide upon the killer's hidden backstory, all at the same time - generating his stories from three different directions at once.

During his time at Averett, copies of Hammonds novels were acquired by Blount Library, eventually being deposited with the Averett Archives and Special Collections for safekeeping.  The covers of the ten editions owned by the Averett Archives are pictured below.

Coincidentally, the archivist read Edge of Fear just last year; it remains a solid little thriller about a teacher being stalked by a murderer.  The book has an additional appeal to an alum or historian of Averett, as it was clearly influenced by his time here.  Hammonds names numerous characters after Averett faculty and staff of the time (Sarah Campbell, Anne Hoffman, John Vinson, etc), and its protagonist is described as an English teacher at "Evergreen College" (which obviously sounds much like 'Averett College').

Although archival books do not circulate - and Blount Library thus has no copies of Hammonds' work to share with its patrons - you may digitally borrow six of them from archive.org using the links above.  Next time you're in a used book store, see if you can find one of his books in their stacks.