Michael J. Roueche's Blog, page 8

Announcing the Name for Civil War novel “Beyond the Wood” Sequel

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Thanks for you gave on the proposed name for the sequel to Civil War novel Beyond the Wood. Your opinions were unanimously positive about the book title, so we’ll stick with it. We received great guidance on the planned order of the subtitles and have changed the order based on that guidance.

So the final (as final as it can be till publication day) title for the second Beyond the Wood Series Civil War novel is:

 

 

A River Divides
Quiet Interlude
Book Two: Beyond the Wood Series

 

 

Status of the Sequel

We’re running behind in publishing A River Divides. Our plan was that it would be out before the end of March, but it will be a bit later. We’ll let you know as soon as we have a solid release date.

Thanks for your patience and your support.

What to Expect

Because of the short time period covered in the book, you will see little actual Civil War fighting in the sequel, but you will continue to see suspicion, intrigue and romance. You’ll get a peek at Richmond and Washington City during the war, and the book will visit the crucial border state of Kentucky. Reaction from those who have read it is that A River Divides is even more of a pager-turner than Beyond the Wood.

You’ll see Betsy and Hank from Beyond the Wood in the sequel, as well as several other characters from the first book. You’ll meet a number of new characters–some of whom are likable,  some less so.

A River Divides touches on Kentucky’s Camp Nelson. You can expect the camp’s history as a major recruitment and training center for African-American soldiers to play a larger role in the third book. We visited Camp Nelson in 2011 as we were doing research.

 

The post appeared first on Michael J. Roueche.

Announcing the Name for the “Beyond the Wood” Sequel

[image error]

Thanks for you gave on the proposed name for the sequel to Civil War novel Beyond the Wood. Your opinions were unanimously positive about the book title, so we’ll stick with it. We received great guidance on the planned order of the subtitles and have changed the order based on that guidance.

So the final (as final as it can be till publication day) title for the second Beyond the Wood Series Civil War novel is:

 

 

A River Divides
Quiet Interlude
Book Two: Beyond the Wood Series

 

 

Status of the Sequel

We’re running behind in publishing A River Divides. Our plan was that it would be out before the end of March, but it will be a bit later. We’ll let you know as soon as we have a solid release date.

Thanks for your patience and your support.

What to Expect

Because of the short time period covered in the book, you will see little actual Civil War fighting in the sequel, but you will continue to see suspicion, intrigue and romance. You’ll get a peek at Richmond and Washington City during the war, and the book will visit the crucial border state of Kentucky. Reaction from those who have read it is that A River Divides is even more of a pager-turner than Beyond the Wood.

You’ll see Betsy and Hank from Beyond the Wood in the sequel, as well as several other characters from the first book. You’ll meet a number of new characters–some of whom are likable,  some less so.

A River Divides touches on Kentucky’s Camp Nelson. You can expect the camp’s history as a major recruitment and training center for African-American soldiers to play a larger role in the third book. We visited Camp Nelson in 2011 as we were doing research.

 

The post appeared first on Michael J. Roueche.

Take Our Survey to Help Name the Sequel.

[image error]When we chose the cover for Civil War novel Beyond the Wood, your advice swayed the outcome. We greatly appreciated your opinion and hope for your help again: This time on the name for the sequel. We have a tentatively final name for it, but want to make sure it works. A few of the criteria for it are that it has to:

1) Be consistent in feel of Beyond the Wood

2) Be related to nature

3) (Believe it or not) Start with a letter early in the alphabet

4) Be unique (no other books in print that use the name–true as of today)

The proposed name is:

A River Divides
  Beyond the Wood Book 2
      A Quiet Interlude.

 

Help Name the Sequel to "Beyond the Wood"
Do you like the name "A River Divides"?





Yes






No







Other













Vote
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Total Answers 8
Total Votes 8

If you have more comments, leave them below. Thanks for your help.

The post appeared first on Michael J. Roueche.

Shot Where You Stand!

“You, Ma’am, if you do not find yourself aboard this wagon immediately; I shall be forced to order you and your four children shot dead, right where you stand!”

With thoughtful pain in his expression, the soldier was recounting the story of a fellow soldier’s wife and children and hundreds of other black refugees being driven at gun point one November day—the “coldest day” of 1864—from Camp Nelson, a major Civil War Union recruiting camp.

Historical actor Hasan Davis portrays Sergeant A.A. Burleigh of the 12th United States Colored Heavy Artillery.

This testimony, set against the backdrop of the end of the Civil War, was delivered in Colorado just this week by Hasan Davis. Davis, a historical actor, presented a one-man show about Union soldier Sergeant A.A. Burleigh of the 12th United States Colored Heavy Artillery as part of Colorado Humanities Black History Month celebration. And it was a great show. Davis brought the sergeant and the 1860s and ’70s to life for nearly 100 people at Littleton’s Bemis Library Tuesday night.

Reconstructed Barracks at Camp Nelson, Kentucky.

Burleigh had fled from his Kentucky master, expecting kindness, generosity and abundance in the army of the nation for which he was willing to lay down his life. Instead, he gained a new harsh master. He found difficulty, cruelty, prejudice and bureaucracy at Camp Nelson. But as he testified, you could feel that, in spite of all he and fellow recruits and their families had suffered at the hands of those who should have been their friends, he was proud to be free and a soldier of the Union.

A.A. Burleigh, former Union soldier, became the first African-American to graduate from Berea College.

Burleigh, born on a ship to an English ship captain, was kidnapped along with his mother when his father died. Stolen in Virginia when he was 2, he and his mother were eventually sold into slavery in Kentucky. He escaped to enlist in the army at 16 and a decade later was the first African-American to graduate from Kentucky’s Berea College, the south’s first coeducational and integrated school. Following his graduation, he moved north, becoming a minister and educator. He died in 1939 at the age of 91.

Davis’ enthralling presentation, delivered in his gentle, rich voice with deep-felt passion, ended up containing three parts. The first covered Burleigh’s time as a soldier. The second covered his time at Berea, an institution that was struggling to challenge the era’s social inequalities. And the third covered the interesting life of Mr. Davis, who with learning disabilities and an urban street-culture environment, struggled to make something of his life. Each segment was inspirational and thoughtful, but the highlight of the evening for me was Davis’ rendition of his first arrest. He was 11, and his mother came to the police station to pick him up. He was expecting a lecture. Instead his loving mother told him that she could see greatness in him. It took him a while and three school expulsions before he could develop it. Today, Davis serves as Commissioner for Juvenile Justice for the state of Kentucky. For those of us at Bemis on Tuesday, our lives are richer because he succeeded.

If you’re interested in seeing a bit of his performance, Kentucky Public Television taped part of it and interviewed Davis several years ago: TV interview with Hasan Davis about his role as Sergeant A.A. Burleigh. But the small screen doesn’t do justice to Davis’ energy and live performance.

While in Colorado, Davis also is portraying York, a slave and member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I’m hoping Colorado Humanities brings him back next year. I’d like to experience it again.

The post Shot Where You Stand! appeared first on Michael J. Roueche.

But Where Was Robin Hood?

Shakespeare’s King John captures the story of a struggle for the English Crown and its land on the Continent. It moves me (for a while) from the comedy and romance plays to Shakespeare’s historical plays in my effort to read all the Bard by his 450th birth anniversary.

While classified as a historical play, it’s not necessarily history. And when it comes to this King John, it is easy to find non-historical stories that paint him in the darkest light: It was against this King John and his evil agents that the not-so-historical hero (and never hysterical)  Robyn Hode—loyal to Richard the Lionheart—fought in later versions of the bandit’s history. But definitely historical is the fact that it was the politically weakened historical John who signed the very historic Magna Carta. Shakespeare mentions neither the Magna Carta or Robyn Hode in his story King John .

Words that capture what I got out of the play are destructive power of ambition; lust for power; ambition and selfishness destroy people and their families. We mark this week, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, reminding us that even if King John isn’t an accurate retelling of the king’s life, in it Shakespeare does capture character traits of past Royals and perhaps even of some of us modern commoners—maybe more than we want to believe.

King John earns Shakespeare one Bard:

 

 

Shakespeare Quotes from the play that appealed to me for various reasons:

Philip Falconbridge: Madam, I’ll follow you unto the death. Elinor: Nay, I would have you go before me thither.

Constance: Stay for an answer to your embassy, lest unadvis’d you stain your swords with blood; My Lord Chatillon may from England bring that right in peace, which here we urge in war; and then we shall repent each drop of blood that hot rash haste so indirectly shed.

Philip Falconbridge: Death…The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs; and now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, in undetermin’d differences of kings….

1 Citizen: He is the half part of a blessed man, left to be finished by such a she; and she a fair divided excellence, whose fulness of perfection lies in him.

Blanch: The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith, but from her need.

King Philip: Play fast and loose with faith?

Blanch: Which is the side that I must go withal? I am with both: each army hath a hand; and in their rage, I having hold of both, they whirl asunder and dismember me. Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win; Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose; Father, I may not wish the fortune thine; Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive: Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose; assured loss before the match be play’d.

Constance: When I shall meet him in the court of heaven, I shall not know him: therefore never, never must I behold my pretty Arthur more. Cardinal Pandulph: You hold too heinous a respect of grief. Constance: He talks to me that never had a son. King Philip: You are as fond of grief as of your child. Constance: Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, remembers me of all his gracious parts, stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; then have I reason to be fond of grief. Fare you well: had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do.

Louis: Bitter shame hath spoil’d the sweet world’s taste, that it yields naught but shame and bitterness….

Cardinal Pandulph: When Fortune means to men most good, she looks upon them with a threatening eye. ‘Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost in this which he accounts so clearly won.

Cardinal Pandulph: A sceptre snatch’d with an unruly hand must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d….

Louis: Strong reasons make strong actions….

Salisbury: Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp, to guard a title that was rich before, to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Pembroke: …Oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by excuse….

Pembroke: …Your fears,—which, as they say, attend the steps of wrong….

King John: There is no sure foundation set on blood; no certain life achiev’d by other’s death.

Pembroke: …Impatience hath his privilege. Philip Falconbridge: ‘Tis ture,—to hurt his master, no man else.

Philip Falconbridge: But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad? Be great in act, as you have been in thought; let not the world see fear and sad distrust govern the motion of a kingly eye: be stirring as the time; be fire with fire; threaten the threatener, and outface the brow of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes, that borrow their behaviours from the great, grow great by your example, and put on the dauntless spirit of resolution. Away, and glister like the god of war when he intendeth to become the field: Show boldness and aspiring confidence. What, shall they seek the lion in his den, and fright him there? And make him tremble there? O, let it not be said!—Forage, and run to meet displeasure further from the doors, and grapple with him ere he come so nigh.

Next Up in my Shakespeare reading (if you’re reading along):  The Life and Death of King Richard II

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Hope He Kept His Parking Ticket

Interesting find this morning related to my quest to read all of Shakespeare by his 450th anniversary. New York Times article confirms that Richard III has been resting under what is now a parking lot for the last 500 years plus.

The Tragedy of Richard III is one of the next plays I’ll be reading; so well-timed.

Is his death one more argument for tighter Halberd control laws and better helmets?

A better helmet, a better helmet, my Kingdom for a better helmet.

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Filled with Errors

I’ve come to the last Shakespeare comedy I’ll read for a while. Depending on how you count them, I have about three more comedies to do later. But for now, The Comedy of Errors is a good place to take a break from comedy as it is first and foremost funny—relatively superficial, farcical and “slapstickish.” It was one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most conventional plays, and his shortest. It has only one story line and follows it through confusion, mistaken identities, misunderstandings to a happy, love-filled, obvious-from-the-beginning end. It’s just a simple, fun play.

I believe it’s the sole Shakespeare play I’ve read so far that mentioned football (soccer) when Dromio of Ephesus comments, “Am I so round with you, as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus? You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither: If I last in this service you must case me in leather.” I didn’t know football was that old, and while modern football may only date to the 1800s, ancient forms predate Shakespeare by more than a millennium.

There were some bothersome aspects of the play: abusive laws, slavery, constant beatings, a mistreated wife and an unfaithful husband, but don’t mind those: This is comedy.

The words that came to my mind as I read the play were inspired by the story that frames the play: constancy, perseverance, and loyalty.

I’m giving The Comedy of Errors three Bards:

 

 

 

Quotes that appealed to me for various reasons:

Adriana: A wretched soul, bruis’d with adversity, we bid be quiet when we hear it cry; but were we burden’d with like weight of pain, as much, or more, we should ourselves complain….

Luciana: Self-harming jealousy!–fie, beat it hence. …How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!

Dromio of Syracuse: …Every why hath a wherefore…. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, when in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?

Balthazar: …Slander lives upon succession, for ever hous’d where it once gets possession.

Next Up (if you’re reading along): I’m skipping over to the histories and first up is King John.

The post Filled with Errors appeared first on Michael J. Roueche.

It’s Filled with Errors

I’ve come to the last Shakespeare comedy I’ll read for a while. Depending on how you count them, I have about three more comedies to do later. But for now, The Comedy of Errors is a good place to take a break from comedy as it is first and foremost funny—relatively superficial, farcical and “slapstickish.” It was one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most conventional plays, and his shortest. It has only one story line and follows it through confusion, mistaken identities, misunderstandings to a happy, love-filled, obvious-from-the-beginning end. It’s just a simple, fun play.

I believe it’s the sole Shakespeare play I’ve read so far that mentioned football (soccer) when Dromio of Ephesus comments, “Am I so round with you, as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus? You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither: If I last in this service you must case me in leather.” I didn’t know football was that old, and while modern football may only date to the 1800s, ancient forms predate Shakespeare by more than a millennium.

There were some bothersome aspects of the play: abusive laws, slavery, constant beatings, a mistreated wife and an unfaithful husband, but don’t mind those: This is comedy.

The words that came to my mind as I read the play were inspired by the story that frames the play: constancy, perseverance, and loyalty.

I’m giving The Comedy of Errors three Bards:

 

 

 

Quotes that appealed to me for various reasons:

Adriana: A wretched soul, bruis’d with adversity, we bid be quiet when we hear it cry; but were we burden’d with like weight of pain, as much, or more, we should ourselves complain….

Luciana: Self-harming jealousy!–fie, beat it hence. …How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!

Dromio of Syracuse: …Every why hath a wherefore…. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, when in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?

Balthazar: …Slander lives upon succession, for ever hous’d where it once gets possession.

Next Up (if you’re reading along): I’m skipping over to the histories and first up is King John.

A New Favorite: “The Winter’s Tale”

I had never before seen or read The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare’s longest comedy with 24,914 words. My loss.

This play is great: engaging, funny, sad, thoughtful; lots of great characters—mostly good—including my nominee for best comic relief character (“Autolycus, a rogue”) in a Shakespearean comedy.

Words and phrases that came to mind as I read the play were jealousy and suspicion contrasted with loyalty and faithful service; sincere, deep-felt love, oaths kept, patience and hope. A family member, when she heard I was going to read it, commented that it was her favorite Shakespeare comedy. Now it’s mine, too. What’s there not to like about a play featuring a man-eating bear, a disastrous shipwreck, a living statue, a fabulous shepherdess, an obsessively jealous—eventually broken—king, and a rogue unable to do anything rascally without pecuniary gain and approbation.

Generally I’m not enamored with Shakespeare’s clowns, but I liked and found both Autolycus and Clown more crucial to this play and generally more enjoyable than clown-like characters in other Shakespeare comedies.

I’m giving The Winter’s Tale an enthusiastic five Bards: 

 

 

 

Quotes that appealed to me for various reasons:

Camillo: You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.

Archidamus: I speak as my understanding instructs me, and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.

Camillo: I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful; in every one of these no man is free. . . .

Paulina: Here’s such ado to make no stain a stain….

Time: I,—that please some, try all; both joy and terror, of good and bad; that make and unfold error….let Time’s news be known when ’tis brought forth….

Autolycus: What a fool Honesty is! And Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman!

Autolycus: Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen….

Shepard: My business, sir, is to the king. Autolycus: What advocate hast thou to him? Shepard: I know not, an’t like you. Clown: Advocate’s the court-word for a pheasant, say you have none. Shepard: None, sir, I have no pheasant, cock nor hen. Autolycus: How bless’d are we that are not simple men! Yet nature might have made me as these are, therefore I will not disdain.

Clown: …Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold….

Autolycus: If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a double occasion,—gold, and a means to do the prince my master good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement?

Autolycus: I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born. Clown: Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.

Leontes: I am asham’d; does not the stone rebuke me for being more stone than it?

Next Up (if you’re reading along) is the final and shortest comedy: The Comedy of Errors

Not a Hero? Faulting Lincoln Again

The New York Times over the weekend carried an irritating column that dealt with the extreme difficulties faced by and suffering of escaping slaves during the Civil War. The writer–one Jim Downs, associate professor of history at Connecticut College–wrote:

Emancipation did, of course, free the slaves in the Confederacy. But Lincoln can no longer be portrayed as the hero in this story. Despite his efforts to end slavery, his emancipation policies failed to consider the human cost of liberation.

Let me get this straight: The man who walked the tightrope of holding together a fractious and fractured Union and, at a strategic point in the war, used his executive power to symbolically and eventually in reality free millions of slaves can no longer be viewed a hero for the effort because he hadn’t in all his spare time developed a plan to care for and transition freed slaves?

War is messy, and the Civil War took a course unplanned by anyone, as Lincoln confessed in his second inaugural:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause (i.e., slavery) of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

I’m sorry to conclude that the professor is practicing weak 21st century “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” of activities a century and half earlier. In the 1860s, it wasn’t at all clear how things would turn out: Would the South succeed in establishing a separate country? Would slavery be affected at all?

During the war, it took the Herculean effort of the Sanitation Commission–a non-governmental body– to promote basic sanitation in the Union army, and that was among and for soldiers–a group the nation valued and wanted to protect. A similar or larger effort would have been required to create a plan for escaping slavery, but there was no similar organization or societal support for such a plan.

In short, to imagine Lincoln being able to create any effort to plan for and care for the unexpected waves of freed slaves under the circumstances in which he lived, is expecting him to be omniscient and omnipotent. If that’s the measure of a hero, you’re right, Professor, Lincoln falls short.

But by my measure of heroism among the un-omniscient and un-omnipotent of humankind, I think Lincoln did pretty well: for the country (North and South), for African-Americans in days that were incredibly difficult for African-Americans, for soldiers (white and black), for citizens (unfortunately a right available only to whites at the time) and for families (white and black).

Lincoln not a hero? That would have been a surprise to the many freed slaves who greeted and respectfully surrounded their president savior as he visited Richmond after its surrender and for the many who suffered in transition during the war.

Lincoln, like all of us, was human and not perfect, but perfection is not a requirement for heroes. I regret the extreme suffering of slaves before and during the war, as did Lincoln, and I’m delighted to announce that I’m keeping him on the pedestal labeled hero.