I’m delighted to welcome David Fitz-Gerald to the blog with an excerpt from his new historical thriller, If It’s The Last Thing I Do #HistoricalFiction #1970s #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

I’m delighted to welcome David Fitz-Gerald to the blog with an excerpt from his new historical thriller, If It’s The Last Thing I Do

From Chapter 6

On Thursday morning, Stanley asked me if he could borrow a couple of hundred dollars until next week. He said he had made some miscalculations. His checkbook didn’t add up straight and he didn’t have any savings. I asked him if two hundred dollars would get him through, and he assured me that it would.

Doyle Polk was coming up the sidewalk as I pulled my wallet from my purse and handed cash to the night watchman. I glanced at the general manager and saw his frown, and in that instant, I knew he didn’t approve and I was going to hear about it. I didn’t have long to wait. Stanley’s Plymouth had barely left the parking lot when Doyle confronted me. “What are you doing, giving that man money?”

I felt my face tighten defensively. “He said he needed money, so I agreed to help him until next week.”

“And what will you do next week when he needs money for something else, Lady Fingers?”

“I don’t know, Doyle. I guess I’ll worry about that next week.”

“And what will you do when Stanley’s coworkers find out you lent Stanley some money? Won’t be long and you’ll be making dozens of loans.”

“Good heavens, Doyle. I never met anyone with such a dismal outlook.”

“You don’t know these guys like I do, Misty. Give ’em an inch, they’ll take a mile. Give ’em a dime, they’ll steal a dollar, and ask you for change for a twenty.”

“How did you get to be so jaded?”

“Did I mention I’ve been here for a long time? When I started out, I lent a guy a hundred dollars. Just like I said, before I knew it, everybody was asking me for money. I felt like a flippin’ bank. Learned my lesson and stopped that right away. These guys lead a hardscrabble life, Misty. They go from one emergency to the next as fast as you turn the pages in the Lake Placid News. You gotta harden yourself to it. You’ve heard the story about the swimmer drowning the lifeguard, ain’t you? If you get too close to ’em, they’ll drag you underwater. Gotta stay aloof. That’s what I always say. Unless you gonna give everybody two hundred dollars, don’t give anybody money.”

Here’s the blurb

It’s 1975, and Misty Menard unexpectedly inherits her father’s business in Lake Placid, New York. It never occurred to her that she could wind up as the CEO of a good old-fashioned manufacturing company.

After years of working for lawyers, Misty knows a few things about the law. Her favorite young attorney is making a name for himself, helping traditionally owned companies become employee owned, using a little-known, newly-passed law. When he offers to help Misty convert Adirondack Dowel into an ESOP, pro bono, Misty jumps at the chance.

The employees are stunned, the management team becomes hostile, and the Board of Directors is concerned. Misfortune quickly follows the business transformation. A big customer files for bankruptcy. A catastrophic ice jam floods the business. Stagflation freezes the economy. A mysterious shrouded foe plots revenge. Misty’s family faces a crisis. The Trustee is convinced something fishy is going on, the appraiser keeps lowering the company’s value, and the banker demands additional capital infusions. Misty thought she had left her smoking addiction and alcoholism in the past, but when a worker’s finger is severed in an industrial accident, Misty relapses.

Disasters threaten to doom the troubled company. After surviving two world wars and the Great Depression, it breaks Misty’s heart to think that she has destroyed her father’s company. All she wants is to cement her father’s legacy and take care of the people who built the iconic local business. Can a quirky CEO and her loyal band of dedicated employee owners save an heirloom company from foreclosure, repossession, and bankruptcy?

Get your copy of the thrilling If It’s the Last Thing I Do now… if it’s the last thing you do!

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Meet the author

David Fitz-Gerald writes historical fiction in his spare time, with the hope of transporting readers to another time and place.

If It’s the Last Thing I Do is his 7th novel.

Dave has worked for more than 30 years as an accountant, employee owner, and member of the management team at a “silver” ESOP (employee-owned) company. He has championed the cause in national, non-profit association leadership roles.

Dave’s family roots run deep in the Adirondacks, going back generations. He attended college and worked at a deli in Saranac Lake during the 1980s. He spent two summers as an elf at Santa’s Workshop on Whiteface Mountain in the 1970s and is an Adirondack 46-er, which means he has hiked all of New York’s highest peaks.

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David Fitz-Gerald is sharing some historical research from The Curse of Conchobar #historicalresearch #blogtour

Today, I’m delighted to welcome David Fitz-Gerald to the blog. I asked him about the historical research he undertook to write his new book.

Research is my rabbit hole and full immersion is my favorite form. Sometimes, that’s easier said than done, especially during a worldwide pandemic, when travel is restricted and museums are closed. For some eras, there’s almost too much information available, whereas artifacts from distant historical periods are often scarce.

The Curse of Conchobar is set in New York State, long before written history reflects the “discovery” of North America. It is now more commonly believed that European people explored North America hundreds of years earlier than 1492. With each new scientific discovery, it seems, earlier new firsts become accepted.

My main character needed a rich back story. The one I invented for him was inspired by our family’s visit to Ireland in 2019. If we had known what was coming, I’ll bet we would have stayed much longer. My favorite part of our visit was the day that we spent at the Cliffs of Moher. I would love to have visited Skellig Michael, where Conchobar grew up among monks and learned to be a mason. As a hiker and mountain climber, I would love to have climbed the steps to see the ancient structures. Fortunately, I found this stunningly beautiful drone footage, by Peter Cox Photography, on youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxU6kk24mho

I’ve also had the pleasure of visiting Stonehenge in England and I’ve always been fascinated by megalithic stone structures. There are many smaller stone structures in New York, New England, and Canada that make you wonder, who built this, when did they build it, and what motivated them to do so? When Conchobar returns to masonry in my book, he creates just such a structure. As I was writing the book, the image of a stone chamber in Leverett, Massachusetts, from The New England Historical Society’s (NEHS) website inspired me to imagine what Conchobar could build in his new home in Northern New York State. According to NEHS, “Speculation now runs rampant about the origins of the mysterious stone structures. Did medieval Irish monks, American Indians or Vikings build them? Or did the English colonists just build them as root cellars?” I choose to believe the first theory presented. Don’t miss the other pictures on this website, but the one I’m referring to is the first picture. https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/6-mysterious-stone-structures-new-england/

The civilization that Conchobar encounters along the banks of what will later be known as the Hudson River is a precursor to the Haudenosaunee, also known as Iroquois. I placed my fictional village for the people in my book, Wanders Far, featuring Conchobar’s descendants, on Garoga Creek, a tributary of the Mohawk River, based on archaeology. If you’d like to spend some time in my research rabbit hole, may I recommend this report, Three Sixteenth-Century Mohawk Iroquois Village Sites, from The University of the State of New York: https://exhibitions.nysm.nysed.gov/publications/bulletin/503-14603.pdf

There is some debate about whether Native Americans inhabited the Adirondacks. I’m confident that they did and I think that science is proving it. If you’re curious about the evidence, you might be interested in this. The First Adirondackers: Part One and Part Two, from Curiously Adirondack.

The characters in The Curse of Conchobar and Wanders Far travel great distances and survive extreme situations in the wild. I have spent countless hours trying to make sure that the creatures I write about are indigenous. For example, I was tempted to write about honey bees, only to discover that they are not native and didn’t arrive in North America until the 17^th century. Crisis averted! It is amazing how many bodies of water would not exist if it weren’t for dams built by modern man, and it is hard to find accurate maps from prehistoric times, so I tried to prove that each waterway existed in ancient times before I wrote about them. And I’ve spent countless hours researching what ancient foragers might have found in New York’s primeval forests. Are you curious about how Native Americans built canoes from materials found in the woods? Check out this historic video from 1946.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enMSwz5BWGo

As for the wanderlust, on May 5, 2018, I set out from Plattsburgh, New York, and walked to Lake Placid, home of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics. I made the 50-mile journey to commemorate the historic 1963 trek of Lake Placid postman, Denny Miller, and also to make sure that the great distances my characters travel are realistic. I set out at midnight and limped into Lake Placid at dark, almost twenty hours later. The next day, I could barely walk. I’m older than most of the distance hikers I have written about, so I figure they can handle 30-miles a day when they need to.

You know the kind of person that takes pictures of historical mile markers so they can reread them later? How about the guy that has to read every placard in the museum―the one that has to be kicked out at closing time because there’s too much to see in just one day? Or the one that irritates the family by going miles out of the way to see something that nobody else is interested in? That’s me!

Thank you for spending a few minutes with me in my rabbit hole.

Thank you so much for sharing your research with me. Good luck with the new book.

Here’s the blurb:

Banished by one tribe. Condemned by another. Will an outcast’s supernatural strengths be enough to keep him alive?

549 AD. Raised by monks, Conchobar is committed to a life of obedience and peace. But when his fishing vessel is blown off-course, the young man’s relief over surviving the sea’s storms is swamped by the terrors of harsh new shores. And after capture by violent natives puts him at death’s door, he’s stunned when he develops strange telepathic abilities.

Learning his new family’s language through the mind of his mentor, Conchobar soon falls for the war chief’s ferocious daughter. But when she trains him to follow in her path as a fighter, he’s horrified when his uncanny misfortune twists reality, causing more disastrous deaths and making him a pariah.

Can Conchobar defeat the darkness painting his steps with blood?

The Curse of Conchobar is the richly detailed prequel to the mystical Adirondack Spirit Series of historical fiction. If you like inspiring heroes, unsettling powers, and lasting legacies, then you’ll love David Fitz-Gerald’s captivating tale.

Buy The Curse of Conchobar to break free from the fates today!

Trigger Warnings: Violence

Get your copy.

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Meet the Author

David Fitz-Gerald writes fiction that is grounded in history and soars with the spirits. Dave enjoys getting lost in the settings he imagines and spending time with the characters he creates. Writing historical fiction is like making paintings of the past. He loves to weave fact and fiction together, stirring in action, adventure, romance, and a heavy dose of the supernatural with the hope of transporting the reader to another time and place. He is an Adirondack 46-er, which means he has hiked all of the highest peaks in New York State, so it should not be surprising when Dave attempts to glorify hikers as swashbuckling superheroes in his writing.