Vicksburg’s Big Sky Court apartment complex got its name in a Rolling Fork field.

“It was morning,” said Matthew Guinn, who bought the former Oak Lawn Apartments at Cherry and Harris streets in 2007. Guinn was hunting with his father-in-law. “And I was trying to decide whether to risk this, whether to come back and risk starting a business… And I just watched that sun come up over the Delta, and I thought, this is big sky,” he said. “That’s where it came from.”

Listening and watching as Guinn told the story, his wife, Kristen, teared up and couldn’t speak for a moment.

“It’s been life-changing,” she explained, “just because it was so overwhelming. I think the project was probably bigger than he was looking for. He was up to the task, but I don’t think he ever dreamed it would take three years.”

“It’s been… a work,” Matthew Guinn said.

Guinn, 40, is an academic with a doctorate in American literature from the University of South Carolina. Advice he was given as he began to write his dissertation served him well as he began work on Big Sky: dissertations are written page by page; remodeling is done floorboard by floorboard.

Guinn was teaching literature at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, when he made the decision to get back into real estate, a sideline job that had helped the couple get through graduate school.

Three years later, 10 of the 12 one- and two-bedroom Big Sky apartments have been restored.

Guinn has done much of the work himself, including some plumbing and floor refinishing, painting and other surface work. His building experience came working summers and other free time for an Atlanta builder.

The complex was built in the 1930s and was sold to the Guinns by the daughter of the late Ellis Bodron, longtime Mississippi state senator.

“We love the town, but I think really we just fell in love with the building,” said Kristen Guinn, 42, a marketing executive for University Medical Center.

Guinn kept many of the original features — interior brick walls, built-in glass-door cabinets and quaint broom closets in kitchens, hardwood floors in living rooms and bedrooms, cast-iron bathtubs, back stairways.

Upgrades include beadboard wainscoting in bathrooms and stone floors over the old linoleum in kitchens, some dining rooms and bathrooms.

Ceilings are high — 9 and 10 feet — and so are the windows, letting in lots of natural light, Kristen pointed out.

“One of the things that attracted me about the building was that it doesn’t feel like apartments,” Matthew said. “It feels like a home. Twelve little homes. That was one of the things that really made me think it would be worth the effort. And we’ve had to use upgrade materials on everything, but that’s what the building deserves.”

Besides his dissertation, which was published in book form by the University Press of Mississippi, Guinn has also written a novel, a legal-medical suspense tale for which he is seeking a publisher. The physical labor of the work balances his literary interests and writing, he said.

“They feed one another. So many things in intellectual life are just completely intangible, but if you give me a bucket of paint, a brush and roller and six hours, I can give you a new room.”

At the same time, as Kristen noted, “There’s something very creative about what has taken place here. It’s like you’re writing a book, or you’re writing a chapter, or you’re restoring an apartment. There’s something similar in that creative process.”

Tenants at Big Sky tend to be short-term professionals working temporarily in or near Vicksburg.

But there have been longer-term tenants as well, including a Grand Gulf engineer who’s lived there more than a year and grows tomatoes, watermelon, basil, peppers and other produce in the yard.

“The best thing about it is there are so many different types of people who come through,” Matthew said. “How it got zoned for an apartment complex in the 1930s I don’t know, but we want to be one of the jewels on the block.”

Standard leases are for six months, but daily and other terms can be negotiated for the complex’s one- and two-bedroom apartments, some with balconies or sunrooms. All utilities and wireless Internet are included.

This fall, Matthew will return to academic life, teaching a course in contemporary Southern literature at the Madison satellite campus of Tulane University. He’d love a full-time, tenure-track college position but said they are hard to find right now.

The Guinns, who live in Ridgeland with their two children, son Braiden, 11, and daughter Phoebe, almost 8, do not own other properties in Vicksburg, but said this project has been so satisfying, they would like to.

“We’re here for the long haul,” said Matthew Guinn. “There is so much opportunity in this. You can’t make a Vicksburg. You can’t build it.”