The Lookout, by Remington |
Brings The Lightning by Peter Grant
Review by Barry R McCain, Oxford Mississippi.
Brings The Lighning is treat
for readers of historical fiction. The
book is set in the chaotic time after the War Between the States. The story takes the reader on a journey from Appomattox
Court House, to Tennessee, and on to a trek west to the growing mining
community of Denver City, in the Colorado Territory. Walt
Ames is an interesting protagonist, a former Confederate cavalry man and scout,
who is trying to rebuild his life after the South’s defeat and
the death and destruction that swept the land during the war. He must overcome
the consequences of being a defeated soldier and a hostile world all too ready
to take advantage of him and his ilk.
Ames decides to head west as so many did in the wake of the war and
make a new life for himself.
The book is well written and moves at an agreeable pace. Author Peter Grant shows off his wide breadth
of knowledge on geography and the technology of the 1860s. The price of flour, the cost of a box of cartridges,
or a room in a St Louis hotel, etc., are details that add realism to the story and
allows the reader be drawn into the 1866 world of Walt Ames. Grant also shines in his skill as a storyteller
and the characters are engaging, realistic, and sympathetic. The reader follows Walt Ames across the
plains accompanied by his woman, and two ex-slaves who are also anxious to see the
West and began their lives there.
Peter Grant has several books out in different genres and Brings The Lightning is his first
historical fiction set in the West of the 1800s. It is book one of what will be ‘The Ames
Archives.’ Book two in the series, Rocky Mountains Retribution, was
published in May 2017.
The story has many of the clichés of the Western book genre. There is a pretty schoolmarm, hostile
Indians, Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers, and brave and loyal men and women who endured
all to find a new life in the West. The ‘clichés’
are not forced or parodies, but reflect the reality of American frontier life,
that while these have become clichés, we must remember they were the reality of people
in that time and place.
I give this book the high rating of Five Stars. It is good read, an interesting and fun
read. It has excellent characters. It is well researched and historically
accurate. Peter Grant is writer with a
growing following and I look forward to more from him. Brings
The Lightning is available on Amazon.
Peter Grant was born and raised in South Africa. He has been a soldier, worked in the IT
industry, traveled throughout sub-Sahara Africa, and has worked as a pastor and
prison chaplain. He and wife live in
Texas.
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