BLURB:
… it was about the land…a tale of love and loss and hope…
“The most engaging and brilliantly crafted historical work since
Margaret Mitchell’s great classic.”
Barbara Casey
Author, The Gospel According to Prissy
Hamilton Ingram looked out across the fertile Georgia bottomlands
that were Moccasin Hollows, seeing holdings it had taken generations of Ingrams
to build. No drop of slave sweat ever
shed in its creation. It was about the
land…his trust, his duty to preserve it for the generation of Ingrams to come…
It is July of 1859, a month of sweltering dog days and feverish
emotional bombast. Life is good for
widower Rundell Ingram and his Hazel-eyed, roan-haired son, Hamilton. Between the two of them, they take care of
Moccasin Hollows, their rustic dogtrot ancestral home, a sprawling non-slave
plantation in the rolling farming country outside Queensborough Towne in east
Georgia. Adjoining Ingram lands is
Wisteria Bend, the vast slave-holding plantation of Andrew and Corinthia Greer,
their daughter Sarah, and son Benjamin.
Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and
childhood playmates are no longer children.
The rangy, even-tempered Norman-Scottish young Hamilton is smitten with
Sarah, who has become an enticing capricious beauty—the young lovers more in
love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them.
But a blood tide of war is sweeping across the South, a tide that
might be impossible to stand before.
EXCERPT:
Bessie's head jerked around, "...them gun
shots."
A stooped-over Sarah looked up, "What?"
"Gun shots..." Bessie put down the box of jars and headed
toward the cellar door. "From the
direction where the men be. We gittin'
upstairs, an' gittin' now."
Sarah's heart pounded as they came up out of the
cellar and looked in the direction of more shots.
"Come on..." Bessie hurried into the pantry where she
reached down the powder horn from the top shelf, then the rifle and pistols.
"Git 'em ready with all that shootin'.
Till we know different, we make sure two-legged low-downs don't sneak to
the house."
Sarah rushed to the window and murmured,
"Hamilton..." She feared for him, for their child, for all of
them. "Surely you don't suppose
it's Federals?"
"Might be better if'n it is 'stead of what
else be skulkin' in them woods. Stay
away from the winder, an' finish rammin' this powder."
Sarah poured the ball and powder firm, rammed it,
pulled the rammer out, and whispered, "Bessie listen...birds stopped
singing."
"Except that cawin' crow seein' somethin' what
don't belong."
Sarah took another quick peek, "There's
several horses, but I don't see any riders.
Mules are still hitched. I don't
see anyone at the plow, but there's men on among the trees."
"You watch the front door." Bessie snugged the pistol in her apron
pocket. "I cover the back. Anybody tries comin' through the dogtrot door
or through the parlor, we back into here, keep 'em from circlin' us."
"What about Papa Rundell?" Sarah's stomach was queasy.
"He keep his rifle ready. Anyone bust in his room be dead 'fore they
twitch a hair."
With a crash the kitchen door flew open. Sarah brought her rifle up and fired, the
shot splintering door and jamb. The
sound thundered through the house.
Bessie's rifle steadied dead-on.
The silhouetted head and shoulders ducked into a
hunch and Hamilton yelled, "Sarah!"
His hand smeared at stinging blood-speckled splinters of wood along his
cheek.
With postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments
in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in
both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and
texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.
Hawk began writing mysteries for his school
newspaper. His works of fiction, historical love stories, science fiction and
mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and
reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin
Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award
for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details
the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery
Series… murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. Vault of Secrets, the first
book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold,
and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series is
due out this fall with another mystery-thriller work out in 2014. The Bleikovat
Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series,
was released in 2012.
"Without question, Hawk is one of the most
gifted and imaginative writers I have had the pleasure to represent. His
reading fans have something special to look forward to in the Craige Ingram
Mystery Series. Intrigue, murder, deception and conspiracy--these are the
things that take Hawk's main character, Navy ex-SEAL/part-time private
investigator Craige Ingram, from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin
Hollow to the dirty backrooms of the nation's capital and across Europe and the
Middle East."
Barbara Casey, President
Barbara Casey Literary Agency
www.hawkmackinney.net
http://www.amazon.com/Moccasin-Trace-Hawk-MacKinney/dp/1595072608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400172529&sr=8-1&keywords=moccasin+trace
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/moccasin-trace-hawk-mackinney/1008084042?ean=9781595072603
The author is giving away a $25 Amazon gift card to one lucky winner. To enter use the rafflecopter link below. You can find his schedule at http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/04/book-blastmoccasin-trace-by-hawk.html
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThank U for hosting the Mocassin Trace virtual tour with its mix of genre(s), characters and a big flavor of romance. It is much appreciated. For readers who follow the Craige Ingram Mystery Series, the Southron tale of Moccasin Trace provides the Scottish-Normandr bloodlines and background of protagonist SEAL/PI Craige Ingram in the thriller-mysteries.
ReplyDeleteHawk MacKinney
www.hawkmackinney.net