Published Books

my first book, the result of my time spent on the ground, beginning in 1992 after watching events unfold as an independent Lithuania faced down the giant Russian bear.

The Heart of a Heroine, to be completed this year, is the story of a Lithuanian librarian, who risked her life to assist the Jews in Vilna Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Lithuanian and later smuggled books into Soviet-occupied Lithuania after the war.

The story of Henry Mack, an escaped slave, who enlisted in and fought in the ranks of a USCT Infantry Regiment during the Civil War, served on the Western frontier in 1866 before the official formation of the Buffalo Soldier regiments, was witness to the Omaha race riot in 1919 and re-located to Minneapolis, where he lived until his passing in 1945 at 107 years.

The first book in a series of books that tells the story of the veterans buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis. 

published by

University of Minnesota Press

Scholarly work on the American Civil War which can  found in most university libraries.

The remarkable story of a military officer of the Czar's Imperial Russian Army , a Cossack, who went AWOL and immigrated with his wife Nadia to the United States to begin a new life. 

They were both intellectuals and followers of the exiled Alexander Herzen with whom they met in London on the way to the U.S.

Turchin worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, knew McClellan, Banks and Lincoln

and campaigned for Lincoln for president. 

When the war broke out, he formed an Illinois regiment and became its colonel.

Turchin played a significant role in transforming the war to a crusade to free the slaves.

He also had a major impact in the Battles of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge.

George Mallon was a prominent labor leader in Minneapolis, who went off to war and returned home as a Medal of Honor recipient. 

By his foray into state politics in post-war Minnesota, Mallon became a pioneer of the Farmer Labor Party, predecessor of the present-day DFL Party of Minnesota. 

This is the untold story of a man long known only for being a Medal of Honor recipient.

Coastal Texas with its broad floodplains and cotton plantations was more southern than western. Numerous planters from the Deep South moved their families and large numbers of slaves to Chappell Hill to re-establish their privileged existence on the Brazos River. This book offers Chappell Hill as an example of the Texan experience before, during and after the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves.

This book received many glowing reviews 

from prominent Civil War historians.

Professor Joe Chance of Texas perhaps had the best grasp of the intent of this book.

GABRIEL'S TRUMPET is the story of two young soldiers who find themselves in the middle of the action in a brutal fight that has no front line. The nightmarish landscape of war displaces any notions the two have of glory as they struggle to make some sense of the violence and somehow survive. They come face-to-face with the grim reality of slavery and what is really at stake in the Civil War. Their encounters with slaves and slave hunters and with planters and partisans push them to the edge in a gripping climax. This novel offers a personal look at the profound impact of slavery.

A young adult novel for which I signed a contract with a top agent in New York City, only to have the underling to whom he assigned this to not relate at all to Texas, faith and fighting. 

I offer some of the many reviews, which this book received from enthusiastic readers.

The novel deals with the environment as relates to bees, as well as immigration.

See a sampling of the many reviews

The heartbreaking story of the personal impact on one family of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and its brutal  systematic destruction of the culture and identity of the Tibetan people. The re-location of this family and re-establishment of the family in the United States.  

Photos by Stephen Chicoine

The powerful story of a man, a valued employee of the Voice of America in West Africa, who endured and suffered the Liberian civil war and managed to get his family to the United States to begin again their lives in the land of freedom and opportunity. 

Photos by Stephen Chicoine