Gulf Coast Love Affair
19th Century Hurricanes
While chasing a dream he could not fulfill, Campbell Smith is searching for answers as to why survivors of hurricanes, himself included, would risk life, family, and wealth to return again and again to the Gulf Coast. What is this love affair with the seashore?
Margaret, the woman he has loved since ninteen, is addicted to seashore living — even after losing so much in two hurricanes, 1875 and 1886, and fervently believes there is no quality of life away from the coast. She wishes to die there, but not in Indianola, Texas where she lost her family and business.
She will go to Galveston where it is safe. Arthur will die with her if it means they can be together. She pushed him away for twenty-seven years due to religious beliefs.
Was he wrong? Will God judge him now? Will he live?
There Oughta Be A Law
Sheriff Art Simonds is ready to retire and turn the department reins over to the first black sheriff ever t be elected in DeWitt County, Texas. Simonds is well aware of known sex offenders living in the county who have to register every birthday, each vehicle change, each move to another location. Life is ordered and he is resting out his days in office when a teenager disappears.
The uproar by the girl’s grandmother leads to unsettling times, especially when a young man is arrested, turned loose on bond and disappears. Later, mutilated bodies are discovered by the grandmother’s abandoned cabin a few miles outside Cuero, Texas. The ex-sheriff becomes involved, upsetting his days of retirement. Suspects abound but no one is arrested except the grandmother. Simonds believes the law is wrong, that Leona Broughton could not be guilty of such heinous crimes.
Preacher’s Son & Henry Brown
Campbell Smith, hot-tempered red head, is a self-righteous man who weakens under pressure in attempting to prove himself adequate to frontier life, and adequate provider over and above his wife’s wealth. March, 1812, he is standing at his assigned post, a sentry on the rebuilt walls of Fort Stone. He resents his freezing assignment. After surviving the devastation of the 1811-1812 earthquakes in southeastern Illinois Territory, what else could be so dangerous as to need a watchman? A pre-1812 War strike, that’s what.
Rebecca Smith, his take-charge wife, is developing delusions of self-importance in her take-over of the women’s duties during the strike upon Fort Stone. This attack by outside forces and her own disposition put Rebecca in an un-admirable postion, no only with her husband, but the entire female population of the compound. This includes her best friend. Rebecca’s personality is offset by an incident of comic relief for the task-driven women when she slips and falls.
Rebecca slips into the past in her mind as she faints from overwork, reliving the events prior to March, 1812.
When The Earthquakes Spoke
Pioneer Mankind Trembled
When the Earthquakes Spoke is a fast moving novel of pioneers and settlers struggling to open up the southern part of the Illinois Territory in the early 1800s, when disaster struck their world in the forms of a series of earthquakes. The setting is basically in an area surrounded by the Wabash, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers.The effect of the earthquakes of 1811-1812 on the lives of freedom-seeking farmers, trappers, squatters, titled land holders, miscreants, dissatisfied taxpayers, business people, and the newly-trained American soldier, is vividly described.Although the book contains bloodshed, dark secrets, light romance, ingrained bitterness, entrepreneurship, bonding, trust and distrust, it is light and easy reading.
This book is a “must read” for history buffs who desire to acquaint themselves with the incessant struggles of their ancestors to settle raw, open territory, still the dwelling place of Indians who rightfully resented the taking of their lands and furs. Albeit fictionalized, who is to know if one of the characters does not describe an ancestor?Subtitled Pioneering Mankind Trembled, the characters suffer a definite lack of understanding the act of forgiveness. The sins of fathers play an important part in the molding of the dispositions and personalities of these unforgiving sorts.Makers and shakers of the Illinois Territory endear themselves to the minds and hearts of close, and not so close, companions. Will they endear themselves to you, the reader?
Make this your next exploration into the days of yesteryear when perhaps your very ancestors forged out a meager living in what later became the State of Illinois.