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About

Dwain S. Tucker lives and works in Los Angeles. He resides in Redondo Beach, enjoying the beach city atmosphere and the southern California lifestyle. He works as a licensed professional civil engineer designing wastewater treatment plants for a large municipality in Los Angeles County. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering, both degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Last, he also works as an actor in television and film projects, is represented by a talent agency, and is a union member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He is an avid international traveler, having visited all six continents and forty countries to date. He is single with no children.

Description

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Story Behind The Book

The first chapter details the reasons for the book. I was irritated that this ugly family rumor of the mysterious death of my grandmother being an actual murder perpetrated by my grandfather. This rumor had plagued my family for over 30 years. I decided I would put the rumor to rest by investigating it, and found shocking secrets revealed along the way.

Reviews

<h5 style="margin:0in 1.8pt 0pt 0in;">BOOK INDUSTRY REVIEWS</h5> Over My Dead Body (overmydeadbody.com) book review website: Reviewed by Cherie Jung "For nearly four decades, a rumor had dogged the author's family. Did his grandfather have something to do with his grandmother's death? Was she, in fact, murdered? Or did she die in the way he had been told? PEEPEYES chronicles Mr. Tucker's search for answers. The unraveling of the mystery surrounding Nell Tucker's death makes for fascinating reading. It's not just a story about one family and what happened a long time ago. It's about a time and place in our history as a nation. Kudos to Mr. Tucker for beginning his quest to know the truth, or as much of it as he could uncover, regarding his grandmother's death and for continuing the quest even when he wasn't sure he would find the answers he was looking for or like the answers he found. Reading PEEPEYES brought back memories of my own family's tainted history. We know that one of my distant uncles was hanged as a horse thief and that my great-great or maybe great-great-great grandmother once hid Jesse James under the floor boards of her kitchen when the sheriff came a callin'. (But we don't know if she hid him willingly.) I think most readers will find PEEPEYES mesmerizing and inspiring tale. It is a journey of discovery. In the author's own words, he describes the reason for this book. "I wanted to describe an individual (myself) experiencing the discovery of how an extraordinary, bizarre mystery happened in a rather normal, Midwest family." <h5 style="margin:0in 1.8pt 0pt 0in;">READER REVIEWS</h5> Anne Carayon: "Great entertaining narrative! The mystery thickens as you go along! The historical and sociological backgrounds have transformed a personal sad story into a page of American Middle West History. It is also a description of what man can do to achieve his egotistical goals. That's universal and timeless." Deborah Schadt: "How brave it was of Dwain Tucker to put so much thought, time, and energy into looking for something he didn’t want to find! His intention to uncover evidence to disprove a family murder rumor led him to the discovery of numerous family secrets, both good & bad. Many in Dwain Tucker’s family learned everything they knew from the school of hard knocks & he was so honest in his portrayal of the “colorful” characters in his family. His attempt at imitating the dialect used by the people of that place & time is both humorous & accurate."

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

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Story Behind The Book

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