James Jones was bruised and broken.

The army soldier had returned to the United States from World War II wounded.

As he lay in a Memphis hospital, he met Lowney Turner Handy.

In the town of Marshall, roughly 30 miles east of Charleston, Handy and Jones – along with Lowney’s husband, Harry – began the Handy Writers’ Colony in the 1940s.

“People that came to learn and become better writers didn’t pay anything to go there,” said Doug Lawhead, journalism professor and a member of the James Jones Literary Society’s executive board.

Jones will be the focal point of the fourth annual Embarras Valley Film Festival, which begins Tuesday and runs through Saturday.

The festival will take a look at World War II on film, which is an area the World War II veteran wrote about frequently. It will feature a writer’s workshop with Jones’ daughter, Kaylie Jones, and the keynote speaker, “Forrest Gump” author Winston Groom.

When Jones was in the hospital, Lowney Handy saw something in him.

Following his exit from the army, Handy guided Jones in his writing. In the early-1940s, they were a part of an unofficial traveling writers’ colony.

The members of the group traveled the country to work on their writing.

It was not until the mid- to late-1940s that the writers settled into Marshall.

Lowney had cabins built for the writers and in 1950, the colony received its official charter.

“It was a unique colony,” said Ray Elliott, a retired professor of the University of Illinois who has been president of the literary society three times. “It was run by an unorthodox woman. She took Jones under her wing because of the potential she saw he had.”

The writers awoke early in the morning and sat in front of typewriters.

Handy gave them literary classics to retype because she wanted the writers to learn what it took and how long it took to create a masterpiece, Elliott said.

“She thought it would benefit them most,” he said.

It was at the colony that Jones worked on the first book of what would become an unofficial trilogy: “From Here to Eternity.”

The book was the story of a soldier from peacetime up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The subsequent novels in the trilogy – “The Thin Red Line” and “Whistle” – were also based on his experience in the war.

He was one of few authors who made it big having witnessed the Pearl Harbor attack firsthand.

Eternity was made into a film in 1953 with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.

This connection led Joy Pratte, the director of the film festival’s planning committee, to choose Jones.

But so was his local connection.