I’m welcoming An American Slave in Barbary – The Odyssey of Winston Prescott Jones by Larry Kelley to the blog

Here’s an excerpt from An American Slave in Barbary

Now, as the sun lowered in its westward descent toward the Atlantic, my thirst and my need to know if my brother might have survived left me no choice.  I walked out the dunes, across the flat beach, down onto damp sand that descended at a steep angle into the surf.  Without worrying if anyone could see me, I made my way toward Sale. I reasoned that unless, by an unlikely twist of fate, I was found by some friendly villager who wished to take me in and hide me, I would turn myself over to the mercies of the Moroccan authorities of Sale and or their agents, in exchange for a cup of water.

As I reached the portion of the beach near the outskirts of the city, two natives in a horse-drawn cart rode toward me near the waterline. The cart held an unarmed man driving and, next to him, a man armed with a scimitar, pistol, and ammunition belts strapped across his torso.  The cart stopped abruptly in front of me.  The armed man leaped out of the cart and ran toward me with his sword drawn, pointing at me. “Infidel, don’t move! Come here,” he yelled at me in Arabic as he motioned that I move toward the back of his cart.  

As he led me there, I saw in the rear bed two of my shipmates and close friends, Moore and Etheredge. “Jones!” they cried in unison. As I climbed into the back of the cart, they reached out their hands to mine with tears welling up in their eyes.  

My new jailor was remarkably a man I recognized as one who boarded our ship when we were captured in the Mediterranean and was among the pirates who sailed it off into the storm.  As he ran a chain through the ring in my ankle iron, which I still wore from our original capture, I said, “Lads, do you know if my brother, Robbie, made it ashore?”

Their looks told me what I feared had to be true.  They shook their heads while looking down at the floor of the cart.

Here’s the blurb

An American Slave in Barbary: The Odyssey of Winston Prescott Jones is the story of a first-generation American student whose commercial ship is captured in the summer of 1801 by Moslem pirates. He spends the next sixteen years as a captive in Algiers. He rises to become a confidant to the Dey of Algiers, who is desperate to know what made the American shopkeepers and farmers believe they could defeat the British war machine, and how they intended to rule themselves.
 
In the genre created by Homer, it is a tale of suffering, sin, and
redemption, and a young man’s epic journey to regain his freedom.
 

Purchase Link

https://geni.us/cgYHz

Meet the author

Larry Kelley’s life was changed by 9/11. He desperately wanted to find out who these people were who attacked us, what ordinary citizens could do to join the battle, and how those plotting to kill us in future attacks could be defeated.
 
Kelley has written scores of columns on the dangers of Western complacency. In his tenure as a political commentary writer, he has made a significant impact. His feature articles have appeared in the Piedmont Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Human Events, and Townhall Magazine. Two of his articles were featured on the cover of Townhall Magazine.
 
His first book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations, is the result of ten years of research. And received critical praise as a saga that begins on the plain of Marathon in 490 BC and whose main character is Western Civilization.

https://www.larrykelley.com

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I’m welcoming Rebecca Langston-George to the blog, with her new book, One Fine Voice

Here’s an excerpt

Chapter 2

The pianist hit a wrong note in the chorus, causing Mama to wince, just as the church’s back doors wheezed open. A girl with a big blue hair bow in the next pew turned to look at me. Our eyes locked. Then she turned toward the doors behind us. I followed her gaze. That’s when I first saw them.

White robed men wearing pointed hoods paraded up the center aisle. They marched together in pairs until they reached the altar where my daddy had just kneeled; then half went left and half went right, forming a line across the front of the church. Their faces were masked save for the cut-out eye holes. Those sunken, shadowed holes all stared right at me, it seemed, pulling my eyes toward them, locking me in their dark gaze, paralyzing me with their murky eyes. 

I tried to sing. I knew every song in the hymnal by heart. But just like the white masks staring at me I didn’t have a working mouth. I tried to read the words in the hymnal, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those blank stares. The one thing in my body that worked was my memory. It jabbed a stick in a deep muddy pool of my mind that usually only bubbled up in my nightmares. 

Four years ago, a winter’s day. A crust of ice crunched underfoot as I walked with my uncle to his barn. A lamb had gotten loose and had frozen to death near the fence. Its white wool stiff with sparkling ice crystals. A black crow was perched atop its head, a dark berry dangling from its beak. The crow flew away, and I saw that the lamb’s eyes had been picked out. Its cold, empty eye sockets stared through me, and I screamed.   

I felt that same urge to scream right then and run clear down the street away from our new church. I even turned my head toward the back door, but something stopped me. The girl—the one with the big blue bow—she was singing, –like she probably did every Sunday. I blinked. I turned my head the other way. Daddy sang along in his strong tenor. Blink. Reverend Dewhurst held his hymnal high and sang toward the ceiling. The pianist plunked on. Mama was the only other one that looked confused. Everyone around us was acting as if nothing unusual was happening, like masked robed men marching into church was perfectly normal. Was this normal for Grayson, Indiana?

Here’s the blurb

All her life, Esther Hopkins has been told she has a mighty fine voice. 

Still, she can’t believe her luck when just days after moving to town she’s invited to sing a solo at the 1923 Independence Day picnic.

But the group sponsoring the picnic is not the benevolent fraternal order they claim to be. Worse, they’ve recruited her father, the town’s freshly ordained Baptist minister, to become their chaplain. 

When they target the immigrant family of her new best friend, Esther must risk her father’s anger, the KKK’s revenge, and her family’s safety to follow her conscience, salvage her friendship, and find the strength to speak truth to power even if it costs all she holds dear.

Triggers: xenophobia, racism

Purchase Link

https://geni.us/BYaF8Z

Meet the author

Rebecca Langston-George is the author of nineteen books for young readers including the globally popular For the Right to Learn: Malala Yousafzai’s Story. Though she’s long been known for nonfiction, One Fine Voice is her first middle grade historical fiction. 

A retired teacher credentialed in both single subject language arts for upper grades and multiple subjects for younger grades, Rebecca is a popular school presenter for all ages, encouraging students to investigate and tap into their personal interests when writing. 

She serves on the board of The California Reading Association and is the Co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI Central-Coastal California, helping other writers achieve their dreams.

She splits her time between California’s scenic coast and its agricultural heartland, writing (and mostly rewriting) at one mile per hour on a treadmill desk. Read more at Rebecca Langston-George | Children’s Book Author.

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www.rebeccalangston-george.com

https://www.historiumpress.com/rebecca-langston-george

www.bookbub.com/authors/rebecca-langston-george