It is an honor to feature a new Historical Fiction release from this author! Read to the end to see my review, and don’t forget to enter the giveaway!
GHOSTLY BUGLES
by
Max L. Knight
Historical Fiction / Texas History
Publisher: Wild Lark Books
Date of Publication: February 23, 2023
Number of Pages: 210 pages
Scroll down for Giveaway!
Do the souls of the dead reach out from beyond the grave? Do echoes of the past resound through the ages? Are such insights a privilege or a curse? An old man grapples with these questions and his own mortality as he re-examines one of the most famous battles in history – the Alamo.
The 1836 siege and battle, as well as current efforts to restore Alamo Plaza to hallowed ground and create a world-class attraction unfold as the old man tries to make sense of his memories, dreams, and perceived outreach by the dead whose souls cry out to him for inclusion and recognition. Beyond the myth and the legend are their stories as well as his own.
Ghostly Bugles is a fictional re-creation of the Alamo story, rich in historical detail with a unique paranormal element. The narrative combines elements of the traditional storyline with contemporary efforts to “Re-imagine the Alamo.” The dual timelines balance our understanding of this world-renowned event and provide new perspective and appreciation for the courage and sacrifice of everyone involved – Texian and Tejano defenders and Mexican soldiers.
MAX L. KNIGHT was born in Panama and grew up in the Canal Zone and in San Antonio, Texas, where he and his wife reside. In addition to degrees from Texas A&M University and Campbell University, Max served twenty-four years in the United States Army (1973-1997), retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
He became the first Alamo Docent in 2004, but the tragic events of 9/11 compelled him to reactivate his security clearance and, when the approval finally came through, he returned to work in support of U.S. Counterintelligence operations. A stage IV throat cancer diagnosis in 2014 abruptly ended that phase of his life, and he turned to writing to help him get through the chemo, radiation, and surgeries. Max is currently cancer free.
His other works include Silver Taps, Palo Duro, and Tarnished Brass.
Parris Afton Bonds has published more than fifty novels in her writing career and has garnered numerous accolades along the way. But she is more than an author to me. She is also a friend and I felt it the first time I met her.
Parris and Jan 7-17-21
But enough about that. Today I am thrilled to let her tell you about a new Historical Fiction book she has published. In case you missed it, I posted my review of Reluctant Rebel HERE.
I’m going to back out and turn it over to Parris to let her tell you about the story that inspired the story.
First, Jan, thank you for taking the risk to feature Reluctant Rebel on your blog. My latest novel is not the usual historical romance in that its story also applies to world events ongoing right now. But then, Jan, you are that kind of individual, the hero who answers to call to adventure.
I was halfway through writing the first draft for a novel set in El Paso in the mid-1800s when researching I chanced across an incident in El Paso that set my mind’s wheels spinning. I knew here was a story I had to write – now! I set aside my other story. This is something I have rarely done. Out of fifty novels, if I count rightly, I have only put one on the backburner. It is still there. Maybe, one day . . .
*** And now the story that stopped me in my tracks: In 1917, a seventeen-year-old redheaded Mexican housemaid, Carmelita Torres, started a riot on the El Paso-Juarez bridge to protest being stripped naked, every bodily orifice probed, and forcibly sprayed with chemicals for typhus by the Public Health Department. Look her up and the accompanying, horrifying photos. The riot made international news.
It eventually involved over a thousand protestors and for three days shut down traffic both ways on the bridge. Dubbed the Redhaired Amazon by newspapers, Carmelita was arrested that day – and then abruptly disappeared from history and time. Most likely, authorities worried that to keep her incarcerated would martyr her, and to set her free would risk her creating even greater havoc. Their solution, most likely, was to remove her from the El Paso City Jail and dump her in the desert. Who is alive today to know what really happened? But disappear overnight, she did.
I knew I wanted to write a happy ending for this intrepid young woman, whom I fictionalized as Pia Arellano. I fell in love with the young man I created who comes to her aid most reluctantly. Walter Stevenson is an agent with the newly formed Bureau of Investigation, on a mission to identify the “master spy” being handled by the precursor of the Nazi party there in the Pass. No two lovers were ever more mismatched.
Unfortunately, the disinfecting of Mexicans at El Paso continued for another 40 years until 1958. Ironically, the Spanish Influenza pandemic that spread across the world a year later, in the fall of 1918, taking its toll also on soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss, proved far more deadly to border residents than the perceived fears of typhus.
**And now for “The Rest of the Story”: As the title of the renowned Paul Harvey radio program, the rest of the Bath Riot’s story is far, far more mind-blowing.
A 1937 German scientific journal specifically praised the El Paso method of fumigating Mexican workers with Zyklon B. Then, at the start of WWII, the Nazis began practicing this Zyklon B fumigation formula at its concentration camps. Later, when Hitler put the Final Solution into effect, the Nazis used Zyklon B in their gas chambers not only to exterminate lice but also millions of human beings.
As our globe faces the assault of yet another unhinged despot in Vladimir Putin, I firmly have faith that there will be enough individuals like Carmelita Torres/Pia Arellano to topple the tyrant.
Jan, thank you for allowing me to share my version of “The Rest of Carmen Torres’s Story,” via my Reluctant Rebel,published by Motina Books.
Courtesy Motina Books
Book Blurb:
In January of 1917, young Piedad Arellano is riding the streetcar across the Santa Fe Bridge that connects Juarez, Mexico to El Paso where she works as a housemaid. When she learns El Paso is using kerosene and toxic chemicals to “treat” workers for suspected lice, she takes a stand and says, No! Thousands join her in the protest, shutting down bridge traffic and making international news.
Walter Stevenson is an agent with the newly formed Bureau of Investigation, on a mission to identify the “master spy” being handled by the precursor of the Nazi party there in El Paso.
Their two worlds collide when Piedad is arrested for inciting the Bath Riots and Walt reluctantly comes to her aid. No two lovers were ever more mismatched.
Spies are pursued, dark family secrets are revealed, and romance may be possible in this historical novel based on the true events of the Bath Riots.
Parris Afton Bonds – Far-right
A few months ago, Parris moved to Queretaro, Mexico. This is a photo of Parris, her friend of 50 years, Isabella, and Isabella’s daughter, Luz, taken recently in Mexico.
I hope you are intrigued enough to pick up this new book from Parris Afton Bonds. I highly recommend it!
Love and hate combine to endanger the Paladíns and all they hold dear.
Designed by Motina Books
Parris Afton Bonds is my friend, but first and foremost, she is a storyteller. She is the author of nearly fifty novels and has been in the business of creating compelling and entertaining stories for over four decades.
Parris Afton Bonds
She is co-founder and first vice president of Romance Writers of America, as well as, cofounder of Southwest Writers Workshop.
Declared by ABC’s NIGHTLINE as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the New York Times best seller Parris Afton Bonds has been featured in major newspapers and magazines, as well as, published in more than a dozen languages.
The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.
And the latest series, The Texican Series, is a perfect example of her writing prowess. Before there was New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, or Utah, there was Texas. Molded by Old Mexico and a new rough and ready breed of hearty settlers from around the world, The Lone Star Republic was the thing of dreams—land, riches, liberty, home. And that is where this series begins with “The Brigands.”
And now Parris has released Book #4 in this series!
Designed by Motina Books
BLURB:
WHEN A LONGTIME family friend is wrongly accused of involvement in a Houston riot and mutiny, Drake Paladín vows to get the best attorney money can buy. That lawyer is none other than Roger Clarendon, known not only for his legal prowess but his insufferable arrogance as well. When the drunken attorney makes an aggressive pass at Drake’s wife, Angel, Drake breaks Roger open like a shotgun. The violent scuffle results in Roger’s father—the Honorable Brighton Clarendon, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court—delivering a none-to-subtle message to the Paladíns: politics is dirty business.
From hereon, the Paladíns are under the gun, suffering failures and even outright sabotage across their many business ventures. Eventually, even The Barony itself, the sprawling South Texas ranch the family fought and won the right to at the Battle of San Jacinto, is put in peril. Rallying together to save their ancestral home, the Paladíns finally put niceties and tolerance behind them. This is war.
But this battle to exterminate the Clarendons takes Preston Paladín all the way to the bowels of pre-war Nazi Germany—and the disarming charms of the beautiful Fabienne Allaman. But on whose side is she really? And dare he risk The Barony and the fate of his entire family for the love of a resistance fighter with nothing to lose?
In the penultimate volume of her riveting Texicans saga, New York Times bestselling author Parris Afton Bonds weaves the threads of loyalty, class, power, and politics into a single captivating tale of one family’s struggle to survive the fires of war and The Great Depression. Written with the authenticity of a historian, the color of a painter, and the grace of a choreographer, The Betrayers is Bonds at her finest.
Writing and Music 
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