Free downloads of historical novels inspired by Upstate New York history

In this time of the corona virus epidemic when so many of us are confined to our homes, I wanted to make available free downloads of the Kindle version of five my novels. They are all appropriate for high school students as well as adults. Relying on Amazon guidelines, the books below will be available at no charge  for five days each from now into the middle of April. Each is closely based on the historical record of figures from our local history who were maligned and misunderstood in their own times.

March 22 to March 26, 2020

Neither Rebel Nor Tory is the story of Hanyost Schuyler who grew up near Little Falls, NY among the Mohawks and who was regarded as "feeble minded" by his white neighbors. His affinity with Mohawk culture allowed him single-handedly to cause the British and their allies to break off the siege of Fort Stanwix in 1777. The novel also features a close look at the Battle of Oriskany and the role played by Hanyost's uncle, Nicholas Herkimer.



March 27 to March 31, 2020

The River That Flows Both Ways is the story of Harmen van den Bogaert, the first European to visit the Mohawk heartland in the 17th century. An explorer and surgeon, he played a central role in building the relationship between the first people and the Dutch settlers at Fort Orange, now Albany.
Later, his same-sex relationship with his African slave Tobias came to the attention of the Calvinist Dutch authorities and he fled to refuge among the Mohawks, only later to perish in another escape attempt. His story is told in the voice of Matouac, a Mohican boy taken as a servant by Bogaert.




April 1 to April 5, 2020

Roxy Druse and the Murders of Herkimer  County is based on a notorious murder case which attracted national attention in 1880s. Roxy Druse was convicted and hung at Herkimer for killing and dismembering her husband on an isolated farm in Jordanville, NY. Although branded as "a female fiend" by the press, this novel paints a more sympathetic picture of Roxy Druse, told in the voice of an actual journalist of the time, W.H. Tippett. The volume also includes Tippett's own history of the Druse and many other murders in Herkimer County.



April 7-11

The True History of Joseph Smith is a re-telling of the life of the Mormon prophet through the eyes of his sister Sophronia. She is very devoted to him as a boy and, like the rest of the Smith family, is in awe of his cleverness. As he grows into adolescence, she learns to make excuses for each new act of fraud, or perhaps imagination, which he initiates. Although she tells her granddaughter, who is the audience for her narrative, that she completely believes all of her brother's stories about visions and angels and golden books, the very details she chooses lead to less generous interpretations.

Every character and incident is patterned closely on the historical record of the remarkable young man from Palmyra, New York.


April 12-16

The Red Nurse is a story of the 1912 textile strike in Little Falls, New York through the eyes of one of its leaders, the public health nurse M. Helen Schloss. The strike by the largely female workers burst out in response to wage cuts and soon drew in the leading radicals of the age. Mayor George Lunn of Schenectady led his socialists to support the women while Big Bill Haywood and Carlo Tresca came with the far more radical International Workers of the World. When the professional and male organizers were jailed, Helen Schloss and IWW organizer Matilda Rabinowitz led the strikers to an arbitrated vistory.

"The True History of Joseph Smith"

In paperback at Amazon for $14.95

On Amazon Kindle for $2.99

The True History of Joseph Smith is a new novel that celebrates - and closely follows - the career of one of Upstate New York's most famous sons, Joseph Smith of Palmyra. Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has long been associated with the state of Utah, its origins lies among the New Englanders who flooded into western New York following the end of the American Revolution.

This historical novel gives voice to Joseph Smith's long-forgotten sister, Sophronia, who tells the story of their shared lives from early childhood to his violent death. She was there when he saw visions in the woods behind his parents' farm and dug for treasure in the hills of western New York. With an almost obsessive love for her brother, she managed to overlook or find excuses for all his adventures with girls – and with the law- in his adolescent years.

When he founded a new religion, she went along with the rest of Joseph's family and followed him as he led them from one Zion to another, from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois. When she finds him seducing a hired girl in a barn, she is stricken speechless – yet when she peeps through a keyhole and witnesses his intimacy with another man's wife, she somehow reconciles his behavior with her faith in her brother. And her faith is not simply in him but in God, whom she experiences through her relationship with Joseph - whatever his obvious flaws and transgressions of accepted moral codes.

In this novel Sophronia is not merely a passive observer. She is surprisingly independent for her time and stands up to the men around her, ranging from her father and brothers to her two husbands. Increasingly, she tells Joseph the truth even as she has to confront the evidence of wife after after wife.

In fact, she becomes friends from a number of her brother's wives – while still staying close to Emma, his only legal spouse. When Joseph heads toward his death at the Carthage jail, Sophronia and two of his wives ride after him in a failed rescue attempt.

Those who know early LDS history will find many familiar characters here: Lucy Mack Smith, Hyrum and Don Carlos Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Porter Rockwell, Oliver Cowdery. Less familiar figures like Sally Chase, who gave Joseph his first seer stone, and Prescindia Buell, the plural wife who bore him a son, also have important roles in the novel.

Those who have less, or no, familiarity with the church founded by Smith will also  find much of interest in this tale of 19th century Americans, many of them from our state. These men and women drew on beliefs and practices that were widely shared among the early settlers from England. They shared an abiding faith in personal revelations, an ancient belief in all kinds of folk magic, and an unstoppable enthusiasm for creating a new society and way of life.