Tom Gauthier

Tom Gauthier

About

Novelist and Playwright, Acting Coach/Director, World Traveler, Lecturer and Communications Consultant. Doctorate in Psychology, Masters in Business Administration - Add it all up over a forty year career and it produces some neat plots to develop for your entertainment!
Novels:

Code Name: ORION'S EYE

A VOYAGE BEYOND REASON
(2009 Winner of Writers Digest Self-Published Book Award)

 MEAD'S TREK

Coming April 2013:  DIE LISTE: Revenge On The Black Sun


Plays: Murder at Alkali Lake
         
Die on our Mountain
          Whisky, She Wrote
           Here Come d'Judge

The Sons of Godwine: Part Two of The Last Great Saxon Earls

The Sons of Godwine: Part Two of The Last Great Saxon Earls

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Description

<p>Emerging from the long shadow cast by his formidable father, Harold Godwineson showed himself to be a worthy successor to the Earldom of Wessex. In the following twelve years, he became the King's most trusted advisor, practically taking the reins of government into his own hands. And on Edward the Confessor's death, Harold Godwineson mounted the throne—the first king of England not of royal blood. Yet Harold was only a man, and his rise in fortune was not blameless. Like any person aspiring to power, he made choices he wasn't particularly proud of. Unfortunately, those closest to him sometimes paid the price of his fame.<br /><br />This is a story of Godwine's family as told from the viewpoint of Harold and his younger brothers. Queen Editha, known for her Vita Ædwardi Regis, originally commissioned a work to memorialize the deeds of her family, but after the Conquest historians tell us she abandoned this project and concentrated on her husband, the less dangerous subject. In THE SONS OF GODWINE and FATAL RIVALRY, I am telling the story as it might have survived had she collected and passed on the memoirs of her tragic brothers.<br /><br />This book is part two of The Last Great Saxon Earls series. Book one, GODWINE KINGMAKER, depicted the rise and fall of the first Earl of Wessex who came to power under Canute and rose to preeminence at the beginning of Edward the Confessor's reign. Unfortunately, Godwine's misguided efforts to champion his eldest son Swegn recoiled on the whole family, contributing to their outlawry and Queen Editha's disgrace. Their exile only lasted one year and they returned victorious to London, though it was obvious that Harold's career was just beginning as his father's journey was coming to an end.<br /><br />Harold's siblings were all overshadowed by their famous brother; in their memoirs we see remarks tinged sometimes with admiration, sometimes with skepticism, and in Tostig's case, with jealousy. We see a Harold who is ambitious, self-assured, sometimes egocentric, imperfect, yet heroic. His own story is all about Harold, but his brothers see things a little differently. Throughout, their observations are purely subjective, and witnessing events through their eyes gives us an insider’s perspective.<br /><br />Harold was his mother's favorite, confident enough to rise above petty sibling rivalry but Tostig, next in line, was not so lucky. Harold would have been surprised by Tostig's vindictiveness, if he had ever given his brother a second thought. And that was the problem. Tostig's love/hate relationship with Harold would eventually destroy everything they worked for, leaving the country open to foreign conquest. This subplot comes to a crisis in book three of the series, FATAL RIVALRY.</p>

Story Behind The Book

Amos Mead's character developed in the novel &quot;Code Name: ORION'S EYE&quot;, and now blossoms in Gauthier's second historical fiction story from World War Two and the American OSS operations. Mead gets thrust into the little known theater of war - CBI or China Burma India - where front lines of combat are fluid and friends become foes/ foes become friends, as real people lived and died in obscurity. The story touchs the real-life events of 1943-44 that, unknown to most Americans, became the smoldering fuse that exploded into the Vietnam War; a war that as you will learn could have been avoided! The political intrigue is based on fact, surprising fact.

Reviews

<p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"><font size="3"><strong><em>&quot;Gauthier weaves a compelling story of intrigue, action and romance.&quot;</em></strong> <span> </span><span>  </span></font></span><span style="font-size:11pt;">Lis Wiehl, author of <em>Face of Betrayal</em> and FOX NEWS analyst</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"><font size="3"><strong><em>“. . . edge of your seat action . . . impressively accurate descriptions of the war . . .”<span>  </span></em></strong><span>   </span></font></span><span style="font-size:11pt;">Judge F. Donald Sokol, WWII B-17 Pilot, decorated veteran of twenty-four missions over Germany and the last raid on Berlin.</span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"><strong><em><font size="3">“Amos Mead's a gem, and he's back in this sequel to Orion's Eye, better than ever. Thanks to Gauthier's strong characterization, his leading man has grown and deepened in Mead's Trek, and his readers will be wanting more.”<br /></font></em></strong></span><span style="font-size:11pt;">Kristopher Franklin, internationally published suspense novelist and editor. Author of <em>Silvercat, The High San Juan</em>, and <em>Relentless<br /><br /></em></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span style="color:#333333;"> <em>Mead's Trek </em>revives convincingly and well nigh accurately the period covering the end of World War II in </span><span style="color:#333333;">Southeast Asia</span><span style="color:#333333;">, particularly in what was known at that time as French Indochina. In this historical novel, agents of the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S) and other American officials interacted with the Vichy French government of Indochina, the Japanese army of occupation, the Chinese officers of Chiang Kai Shek and the Viet Minh, a Vietnamese anti-fascist, anti-colonial and pro-independence movement fostered by the Communist Party of Indochina.    TRUONG BUU LAM - noted Vietnam Historian</span></span></font></p><p></p> <p></p>