When Family History Doesn’t Work Out as Expected

When I began to write my historical novel Brookhaven, my jumping off point was a family story. My father often told me about my great-grandfather, Samuel Young, and his Civil War experience.  

The story was this: Samuel was 13 when the war began in April of 1861. He was too young to enlist, so he signed up as a messenger boy. He had been in that position for a good deal of the war. When the war ended with the surrender of General Lee’s Army at Appomattox Courthouse to General Grant and the surrender of General Johnston’s army to General Sherman at Greensboro, Samuel found himself in the East, with no way to get home except by foot.

 

The story went on, 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest. 

Photograph: My paternal great-grandparents, Samuel Franklin Young and Octavia Montgomery Young.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Is the End of Reading Here? – Zach Franzen at Story Warren.

 

Education and Marxism – Jerry Newcombe at Real Clear Politics.

Jon Nappa Imagines the Life of Longfellow

When I was writing my historical novel Brookhaven, I almost stumbled into using the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a literary device. I had recently read three of his epic poems – The Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline, and The Courtship of Miles Standish. As I child, like virtually every other schoolchild of my generation, I had memorized “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.”  

After reading and writing about the three epic poems, I read Cross of Snow, the 2020 biography of Longfellow by Nicholas Basbanes. Two years later, I saw the movie “I Heard the Bells,” the story behind Longfellow’s poem that eventually became a popular Christmas carol. And all this while, I kept looking for something that will help me unify a theme for this as-yet-unnamed novel. 

 

The movie might have been the clincher. And I thought, what about Longfellow’s poetry? If I had searched more or better than I did, I might have found the 2017 novel What Longfellow Heard by Jon Nappa. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Late summer – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Nesting Ground – poem by Rachel Lyn Aldreick at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The Pershing Hotel – poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at Every Day Poems.

 

Discover Your Favorite: 15 Poems Every Kid Should Know – Jody Lee Collins.

 

Howard’s Trees – poem by Benjamin Myers.

Decision on the Stairs: New Short Story at Cultivating

The Summer 2026 edition of Cultivating Oaks Press is online today, and the theme is “renewing charity.” My new short story, “Decision on the Stairs,” is fiction, but it’s based on something that happened to my wife and I in London in 2012. We were getting ready for our day when fire alarms went off, and the hotel had to be evacuated. The elevators were not an option; we were on the 14^th floor, and the hotel was nearly full. There was no panic, but there was rising anxiety, and people were rushing to get out.  

What happened on the stairs became a short story 14 years later. You can read the story here. You can access the entire issue here.

Photograph by H&CO via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings - June 24, 2026

Great Americans: ‘We’re Going to Take Back the Airplane’ – Colleen Shogan at The Free Press. 

There Are More than Five POVs – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Murder in disguise – Carl Trueman at World Magazine.

 

“The Moonlight,” poem by Yvor Winters – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Move Over, Mario Puzo – Dwight Longenecker at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Charlie Jones, Photographer – Spitalfields Life.

 

A.R. Ammons and arts patronage – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The Hardest Part of Fatherhood – Chris Martin at FYI.

 

Writers and Their Houses – Jay Parini.

 

Photograph: poet and writer A.R. Ammons (1926-2001). 

Sara Barkat Takes Us into “Otherside”

Until the late 1970s, my reading of science fiction was limited to the stories and novels of Ray Bradbury, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. I didn’t have any inherent bias against science fiction; it was more my reading interests were in other directions. 

For some reason, I picked up a paperback edition of Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg. Then I went to the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov (published in the 1950s, it may explain American politics of the last decade). Then the novels of Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. And Arthur C. Clarke, whose Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood’s Endremain among my favorite books. But as much as I loved the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, even then I knew how much it was changing science fiction. Fantasy was taking over. 

 

Years passed. Reading interests changed. And then the old memories stirred when I read The Shivering Ground by Sara Barkat. The wonderful graphic version she did of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space, was another reminder, even though it’s usually called a horror story. And now she has a new novel, Otherside, which is about as close as you can get to mainstream science fiction as you can.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

For the Road to Santiago – poem by David Whyte.

 

The Wordless Rose: Ruchard Wilbur’s ‘Advice to a Prophet’ – Alexander Fayne.

 

Veshicular – poem by Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

Poetry in Prose – Where Love is Born – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Lives upon Lives – poem by Baruch November at Evey Day Poems.

 

“Requiem,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

The Christmas Solo – my new story at Cultivating Oaks Press

I have a new story at Cultivating Oaks Press. Entitled “The Christmas Solo,” it’s a tale of a man floundering after a marriage disaster who finds his way back with a Christmas song.  

It’s inspired by a song that has a short but strange history on YouTube, of all places. Early last October, a suggested video showed up on my YouTube page. Because it used a photo of the singer Josh Groban, I thought it was a new song by him. It was called “Light of Heaven,” and after listening to it a couple of times, I realized it sounded like Groban singing but wasn’t. Then I ask myself, what is this? Something done with an AI program? Identity theft? But if it was on YouTube, shouldn’t it have been vetted or approved with a new channel?

 

There were a number of similar videos, most using Groban’s picture and the voice sounding like Groban’s, but not quite his. A few other videos used other well-known singers like Rihanna. 

 

But I liked “Light of Heaven.” I’d listen to it while I did my periodic walks. Slowly, as I listened, a story began to shape itself in my mind. A song about the Nativity could become a way of redemption for a broken man. 

 

That’s the story I wrote for Cultivating Oaks Press. 

 

I had continued to listen to “Light of Heaven” on YouTube until this past weekend. It was still available on Saturday. On Sunday, clicking on the link brought this message: “Video unavailable. This video has been removed due to a contractual obligation with a music licensor.” Not only had the video vanished, but its channel, along with all the other songs, was gone as well.

 

It’s a story based on a song that became a ghost. All that’s really left of the song is this story. 

 

Photograph by Tom Allport via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Wisdom through the awful grace of God – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

The Adams Book Club: An Introduction – Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

 

Archaeologists stunned to find Homer’s Iliad inside ancient Egyptian mummy – Vishwam Sankaran at The Independent. 

 

Vagabondia – Spitalfields Life.

Some Monday Readings

Publishing’s Little Secret: It’s All Gambling – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

Nothing is more practical than falling in love – Joy Clarkson (Hat tip: Amelia Friedline). 

 

John Dempsey’s Street Portraits – Spitalfields Life.

 

Everyone Gets Rejected – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The View from the Garden at 120 – A London Inheritance.

 

The Good Shepherd – short story by Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

 

Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine – Churck Chalberg at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Top: The cover of Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth.

When I Discovered Latin American Literature

Yesterday, I received I Gave You My Silence, the new novel by Nobel Prizewinner Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa died last year; this is his final work, published posthumously. 

When I saw the notice that it was being published. My mind moved back in time, some 40 years, to 1986. I was in a master of liberal arts program at Washington University in St. Louis, and I signed up for a fall seminar – The Latin American Novel. We would be reading novels by Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), and Carlos Fuentes, among others. The reading syllabus was challenging.

 

I don’t recall why I signed up for that particular course; others were available. My total reading experience in the Latin American novel was limited to one book – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perhaps that was the reason; Latin America has a vast literature, and I’d read very little of it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

An Unknown Woman: how I discovered a hidden tragedy tied to Russia’s most famous painting – Vladimir Raevsky at The Guardian.

 

Did Edgar Allan Poe Invent Detective Fiction? – Thom Delapa at The Collector.

 

John Brown in Lake Placid – Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War. 

In Praise of Art Museums as Sources of Inspiration

I’d heard that, as you age, you often become more interested in art. What I didn’t expect was to discover how that growing interest in art would affect my fiction writing.

I wasn’t a stranger to art, but I can’t say it was a major preoccupation, either. I had two semesters of art history in college; I took two, because the same textbook was used for both, and it was more expensive than the tuition. I’m also not an artist.

I know when my connection of art to writing fiction started. It was some 50 years ago. We were young twenty-somethings living in Houston, and we saw two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts. One was the works of Paul Cezanne, and it was stunning. But the one that captured me was “Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, Leningrad.” Houston was one of five cities hosting it. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Painting: Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki, by Anselm Kiefer, from collection of the artist on display at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The genre that came in from the cold: Why we love spy fiction – Andy Owen at The Critic Magazine.

 

Fierce, wild, intractability: Emily Bronte’s untameable spirit – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader. 

Surf’s Up in Slop City – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

Books I’m Not Recommending This Christmas

It’s my annual list of the some of the best books I read this year. I call it “Books I’m Not Recommending” because I’m personally resistant to recommendations. But I can tell you what I consider to be the best books I read.  

Poetry

 

The largest single category of my 2025 books is, as it has been for several years, poetry. I read a considerable number of really fine poetry collections, and my reviews end up at Tweetspeak Poetry. If I had to pick one, it would likely be an older one – Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice. 

 

Three books about poetry that I enjoyed are Dante’s Divine Comedy by Joseph Luzzi; An Axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant; and Ambiguity & Belonging: Essays on Place, Education, & Poetry by Benjamin Myers. 

 

Fiction

 

I OD’d on Wendell Berry year, reading three of his numbers (not to mention his Mad Farmer Poems). Without question, I enjoyed Remembering, The Memory of Old Jack, and Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Berry is still writing, and I’m hopeful I haven’t seen the last of the Port William novels. 

 

Foster by Claire Keegan is a short novel that packs a powerful wallop; her 2021 novel Small Things Like These is also rather amazing. And the (longish) short story Abscond by Abraham Verghese is a wonder. I also read an older short novel, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, that was published in 1980 but speaks to us today.

 

Art and Architecture

 

Art continued to be an interest, and three books I would not only say were among the best I read overall but I also wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Van Gogh’s Ear by Bernadette Murphy explains how the author researched and tracked down the real story of his ear (and his art). Christopher Gorham’s Matisse at War is meticulously researched and focuses on Henri Matisse and what he and his family did during World War II. And Russ Ramsey followed his wonderful Rembrandt Is in the Wind with the equally good Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.

 

I’m not a major (or even minor) reader of books about architecture, but one I read this year that was excellent was Forgotten Churches by Luke Sherlock. (It probably helped that I had visited some of the ones cited in the book.)

 

Civil War

 

Last December, my historical novel Brookhaven was published by T.S. Poetry Press. The research that went into it – nine pages of bibliography – was extensive. But publishing a historical novel doesn’t mean the research stops. Two books about the Civil War I read this year and I really liked were Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle and Fred Grant at Vicksburg by Albert Nofi. (I reread Brookhaven, too, and I highly recommend it.)

 

Mystery

 

Willliam Kent Krueger’s mysteries have been around for many years, and I’d read his more literary novels. I finally read Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O’Connor mysteries, and then the second, Boundary Waters. I’ve bought the third and can’t wait to read it. (There are some 20 or so in the series.)

 

I also liked London Blue, the latest in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, and Tides of Death by Luke Davis, the first in the DI Gareth Benedict series. I also reached the current end of the Pete Brasset mysteries featuring DI James Munro (Ruse), and the current end of the Hillary Greene mysteries by Faith Martin (No. 21, entitled Murder on the Train). And I enjoyed Suffer the Dead by Rhys Dylan, the fourth of 21 in the DCI Evan Warlow mysteries.

 

And that’s the list for 2025.

Top photograph by Olena Bohovyk via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

At the Savoy Chapel – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Oh I could raise the darken’d veil,” poem by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dropped without Joy – Alexander Fayne on the poet R.S. Thomas.

"Boundary Waters" by William Kent Krueger

A popular singer who goes by one name, Shiloh, quietly returns to the Aurora area. No one knows she’s there; she’s enlisted the help of Uncle Henry, an older and local native American, to hide her away in a cabin in the remote area known as the Boundary Waters, reachable only by canoe (or possibly helicopter) through several lakes and portages. It’s an isolated wilderness area, exactly what Shiloh was seeking.  

Since the story opens with the torture and presumed death of Uncle Henry, by someone seeking Shiloh, you know trouble is ahead, likely for the singer but likely for a lot of other people as well. When she was a very young child, Shiloh witnessed the death of her mother but was never able to recall what she’d seen. That is, until as an adult she had been taken through memory regression by a therapist. And now she’s in hiding.

 

The young woman’s stepfather arrives in Aurora and asks Cork O’Connor to help find Shiloh. Two FBI agents approach the local sheriff with the same quest. Cork enlists the help of local tribe member and his young son; the boy has been trained by Uncle Henry and knows the Boundary Waters region as well as anyone. And he knows where Shiloh is likely to be found.

 

William Kent Krueger

As their team sets out by canoe, other men come looking for Shiloh as well. But they’re hired to kill her – and anyone who might stand in their way. They’re followed by a wheelchair-bound man who’s a borderline gangster. He claims to be Shiloh’s father, and he wants her found as well.

 

Boundary Waters, the second in the Cork O’Connor mysteries by William Kent Krueger, keeps the reader guessing to the end. Who is it really who wants Shiloh dead? What does really know? Who tortured Uncle Henry to death? Krueger keeps moving the chess pieces around the board to make a feint here and throw a red herring there. Placing a child at risk layers in another element of suspense and tension. And Krueger cleverly keeps the story moving between the journey in the Boundary Waters and what’s happening back in Aurora.

 

Krueger’s Cork O’Connor novels are all set in the North Woods of Minnesota. Krueger’s also published three standalone novels: Ordinary Grace, The Devil’s Bed, and This Tender Land. He’s received several awards and recognitions, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, the Friends of American Writers Prize, and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His last nine novels were all New York Times bestsellers. Krueger lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

 

Related:

 

Iron Lake by Wiliam Kent Krueger.

 

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. 

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger.

Tamarack County by William Kent Krueger. 

Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” song by Patrick Gilmore – Debra Esolen at Word & Song.

 

New Grub Street: George Gissing’s Novel of the Writing World – Tim Page at The Wall Street Journal.

 

Mr, Popular Sentiment – Ferdinand Mount at The Lamp on the contemporary critics of Charles Dickens.

Single Dads in Non-Fiction and Fiction

It was only coincidental. I read Joseph Luzzi’s In a Dark Wood: A Memoir (2015) and the next in my reading pile was Unconditional: A Novel by Stephen Kogon. Both books, one non-fiction and the other fiction, told the stories of young men suddenly finding themselves single fathers. 

Luzzi is a professor of Italian and teaches at Bard College in New York. In 2007, just as his lecture class was about to begin, he noticed a security guard come into the room. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

“Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story” by Wendell Berry

Andy Catlett, whom we first met as a boy in an earlier novel by Wendell Berry, is now an old man. As old men are wont to do, he’s looking backward – at his life, his parents’ lives, and even earlier. And what he sees, far more clearly than he would have seen in his youth, is what shaped four generations of Catletts, including himself and his own children. 

It is a story, a story that happened to his grandfather, Marce Catlett, a story that happened in less than 24 hours but lasted more than a century. And it shows every sign of continuing to last. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Irish Tigers from Louisiana (and why they fought for the South in the Civil War) – Patrick Young at The Reconstruction Era. 

 

Life of the Mind & Heart at Hillsdale College – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative.

“Ice Cold Malice” by Rhys Dylan

It begins with a scene common from childhood. Two young brothers, watching to make sure no one is around, slip on to government beach property, looking for souvenirs of military exercises, the sea, and anything else that might look interesting. What they find is a body in a bag. 

DCI Evan Warlow and his team investigate. They body is that of a doctor, or former doctor, as he’s been struck off the approved medical practice list for activities unbecoming a doctor. And the list of suspects is almost longer than the list of people who knew the man.

 

Warlow has his own personal problems to deal with, like his ex-wife, who’s been arrested for driving under the influence. She says it was that one glass of wine mixed with her meds. But she refused a breathalyzer test, declined a solicitor because she could prove this wasn’t DUI, and wasn’t even driving the care at the time of the arrest. All of which Warlow knows to be bad mistakes.

 

Rhys Dylan

Ice Cold Malice is the third of the DCI Evan Warlow series by Welsh author Rhys Dylan, and it’s just as good and entertaining as the first two. Dylan works in enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing (and on edge) through the entire story. And this time one of his own officers is threatened.

 

Dylan has published 18 novels in the DCI Evan Warlow series. A native Welshman educated in London, Dylan wrote numerous books for children and adults under various pen names across several genres. He began writing the DCI Warlow series in 2021; The Engine House was published in 2022. Dylan lives in Wales.

 

Related: 

The Engine House by Rhys Dylan.

Caution: Death at Work by Rhy Dylan. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Idea of the University & the Future of Civilization – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

The revival of England – David Shipley at The Critic Magazine.

 

Never use your own car – J. Robert Lennon at London Review of Books on Elmore Leaonard.

 

Until I Cross Water – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

 

Britain: Let our pubs live – Thomas Munson at The Critic Magazine.

 

Crimes that aren’t crimes in New York – Jennifer Harrison at The Spectator.

“Bones in the Blackout” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones is a young, married physician who volunteers for active duty when Germany invades Poland in September 1939. He expects to be assigned to the medical crops. Instead, his occupation is deemed critical, and he’s sent to the small village of Birdswing in Cornwall. Coincidentally, it’s the same town his wife left some years before – and never returned. She’s also leaving behind in London the man she’d been having an affair with – and it looks like this assignment will be make-it-or-break-it for their marriage. 

Except events never proceed that far. As soon as they arrive in the town that first evening, when everything is blacked out because of the war, a hit-and-run lorry seemingly comes from nowhere and plows into the couple, jilling here and shattering the young doctor’s leg.  

 

It looked like an accident, but Ben has his doubts. As he recovers, he finds an anonymous note left on his pillow at the pub where’s staying. The writer is apologizing for Ben’s injury; the only target had been his wife.

 

Ben begins to look into his wife’s death and the death of another young woman, whose death also appeared to be an accident involving leaking gas in her home. He’s assisted by Lady Juliet, who lives in the local manor, who develops a crush on the young doctor without him realizing it. As he gets deeper into recent local history and the secrets lying buried, he finds that his dead wife had plenty of enemies in the village. And the danger may not be over.

 

Bones in the Blackout is the first of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the “Blue” series, and I thought I’d try her other detective series. I’m glad I did – Jameson seems to catch the early years of World War II on the home front exactly right and Dr. Bones is just as engaging as her contemporary London police detectives.

 

Bones in the Blackout is a thoroughly enjoyable story, full of unexpected twists and turns and highlighted by a thriller of an ending. I’m looking forward to reading the next three in the series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Don’t trust the BBC on America – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

Liberalism Without Illusions – William Galston at Democracy.

 

When the Internet Was a Place – Raleigh Adams at Front Porch Republic.

 

An American Greatness: Willa Cather’s “O, Pioneers!” –Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Loyalist Who Gave Birth to His Nightmare – Richard Briles Moriarty at Journal of the American Revolution. 

The Bookshops of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Long-Forgotten Rubens Found in Paris Mansion – Jo Lawson-Tancred at Artnet.