The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour begins its fall season next Thursday, Sept. 1, at 6 p.m. at the Lyric Theatre.

Admission is free and drink service will be available. Guests for the season premiere will include multi-instrumentalist Jamison Hollister, The Patrick Smith Band and bluegrass band New York City Slickers.

The show will also celebrate the national re-issue of “Trials of the Earth” (Little, Brown), the heroic and harrowing memoir of Delta pioneer life by Mary Mann Hamilton (1866 – 1936). Selections from the book will be read by her great-granddaughter, Sheilah Hamilton Pantin, great-great-granddaughter, Kristi Pantin Smith and Mississippi actress McGhee Monteith. Hosts of the show are Jim Dees and Thacker house band, the Yalobushwhackers.

Next Thursday’s broadcast can be heard on WUMS 92.1 FM and online at: www.myrebelradio.com.

Bringing “Trials of the Earth” to print has been a long, fascinating journey. The manuscript languished in a box under a bed for 50 years before it was re-discovered by Hamilton’s descendants and sent around to potential publishers.

The result is the only known firsthand account of a remarkable woman thrust into the center of taming the South — surviving floods, tornadoes, and fires; facing bears, panthers and snakes; managing a boardinghouse in Arkansas that was home to an eccentric group of settlers, and running a logging camp in Mississippi.

Great-grandson Kerry Hamilton has taken on the role of the producer by lining up the musical guests.

Along with writer Elizabeth Dollarhide, they have divided the book into three themes that proved pivotal for Mary Hamilton and her family: fire, water, and earth.