Brings the Lightning by Peter Grant
Peter Grant, for those of you unfortunate enough not to have heard of him, is a soldier, humanitarian, pastor and author living in Texas. He has written a new book which I would like you to consider.
He has written nonfiction on his time as a prison pastor as well as science fiction yarns The Maxwell Saga and The Laredo Trilogy, but now he has written a western.
Castalia House is very pleased to announce the publication of Book 1 in The Ames Archives, Brings the Lightning, by Peter Grant.
The book description:
When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can’t go home?
He can go out West, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought – only how well you can do it.
Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed West with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can’t forget.
When you can’t go home again – go West!
Peter Grant has this to say:
It’s been a labor of love for me, because I grew up on a steady diet of what I’d call ‘classic’ Westerns; Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, the ‘English Westerns’ of J. T. Edson, and the like. In military camps across Southern Africa, paperback copies of their books were in circulation. One sometimes had to wait to get hold of two or three copies in order to finish the story, because missing pages at the beginning and end could make the books a little impenetrable; but one knew there’d be more copies floating around at the next base.
I particularly strove for accuracy and historical authenticity. I’ve gotten very tired of reading (and watching) Westerns where the weapons, or the food, or the wagons, or the clothes, weren’t period-correct. The real thing was fascinating; the impact of the Industrial Revolution on so many areas of life was still making itself felt, so that from generation to generation, lives would be lived very differently. I was able to take my time while writing it, assemble a fairly decent reference bookshelf or three, and make sure that what I wrote was as accurate as I could make it.
The publisher has this to say:
for many Western civilizationists who love liberty, the Western is central to our conception of ourselves, and moreover, that there was very likely a connection between the SJW infestation in SF/F and the loss of interest in the Western genre by the mainstream publishers. As we’ve seen everywhere from computer games to comics and RPGs, it is all one big cultural war.
And then there is the fact that Fair Blows the Wind is one of my favorite novels in any genre.
So, I got in touch with Peter, told him that Castalia would love to get on board with the Western revival, and offered to publish what I learned was not merely the novel that turned out to be Brings the Lightning, but was the first book in a series about a man named Walter Ames, a Confederate who finds that he can’t return home to the farm in Tennessee after the Civil War. Peter is a man of a vast and varied experience, and it shows in his writing.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
