Not acquainted with my books? Then I have some suggestions. Since there is nothing that connects my novels’ content in any way there is no need to read them in sequence. I would suggest, though, that you open my most recent novel, Cold Morning Shadow first. In western South Dakota, in the late 1960s, local teenage siblings in one family become acquainted with newly-arrived siblings in another family, and the four of them mature together into early adulthood. It does not, though, fit the coming-of-age category of fiction; it’s so much more than that. Like many timeless classics it’s a long novel and could have been published as a two-volume set, as happened with Michener’s Texas.
Some readers, especially those who like fantasy and dystopian fiction, seem to enjoy an interminable story spanning a series of sequential novels. Cold Morning Shadow is not that, but between the covers it is neatly divided into Book One - Lucky Diamond and This Guy, and Book Two - Half-soul in Tatters –– what some authors call a diptych, (where a three-book series is a trilogy). It also stands as a family saga but told from viewpoint of one generation. As its cover explains, it’s "a novel celebration of language, friendship, love, and hope” –– hope that is fulfilled.
There is much more about it at ColdMorningShadow.com.
While Cold Morning Shadow, the third of my major works of fiction, is told in the third person (from the viewpoint of an outside observer), Fire, Wind & Yesterday, a historical novel set in the ninth century A.D., is a first-person account of a young couple’s encounter with a pair of Orthodox monastics who are among the first to penetrate the region north of Greece which we now know as Ukraine. None of my novels fit a “religious” category, but some characters in each do evince faith in one way or another. The Greeks in Fire, Wind & Yesterday are on a mission, based in Ukraine’s early history, to attend a gathering of Jews, Muslims, and Christians at the invitation of the ruler of the Khazars near modern-day Volgagrad. The purpose of their mission naturally affects the future of the couple whom the travelers befriend early in their journey.
As for my own circumstances, I could bemoan and dwell on the setbacks in my life and the misfortunes that have tormented me – things that I have done and now regret and things that have been done to me and which I could evermore resent. (These are not much different from what everyone, everywhere, deals with in a lifetime.) However, I am well-acquainted with God. For most of my adult life and through its trials I have lived with abiding internal peace. I have also been blindsided by examples of God’s astonishing grace, not miracles as we think of them, but profoundly impossible coincidences, you might say.
And so, while I could be bitter and indignant over my accumulated disappointments and failures, I am humbled instead by the opportunities and advantages that have come my way, and I am deeply grateful. One day long ago, as she struggled with one resistant task but persisted with it anyway, my wife of 50 years said to me: “I don’t ask. I just do. And when I meet my Maker I’m going to insist on a full explanation.” She deserves that explanation and, perhaps, to a greater or lesser degree, each of us does. I would dearly like to be close by when she takes God by the lapels and with eyes wide and lips firm she implores him to start explaining.
It won’t happen quite that way, I realize. But I know that an explanation awaits us all. For God to try explaining this earthly existence to us individually, in our present state and in our human ignorance, would be like you and I trying to describe a beautiful sunset to an earthworm or trying to explain DNA to a horse. What lies outside time and space is beyond our comprehension. I know, though, what I must do while I’m here. I know, too, that I must wait until I have transcended this mortal life for the percipience and understanding that are to come.
Similarly, therefore, various characters in my novels contemplate these same ideas.
The third big historical novel, that is, the one most recently released, is in fact the first one that I wrote – The Elephant of Surprise. After working on it for ten years I laid it aside in 1982, considering it good only for practice. But in 2023 I pulled the typed manuscript out of storage and realized that there was some good stuff in there. I revived it, rewrote it, and it was published in 2024.
The Elephant of Surprise and Fire, Wind & Yesterday are both described in detail at DamnYankee.com and all three are available, reasonably priced, at Amazon.com in quality paperback and for Kindle, (free with Kindle Unlimited). I hope this nudges you to look at them all and that you will choose one that will make me your new favorite author.
Best wishes and happy reading!
=David=