About
My family moved to the U.S. from Canada when I was ten. After that I lived mostly in Maine and graduated from the University of Maine at Orono. My first two novels ("The Meantime" and "Song For A Shadow," both young-adult) were published with Houghton Mifflin but the current one, "Lucifer's Drum," is self-published and a historical thriller, set in the American Civil War. These days I live and work in Memphis, Tennessee.
Influences: "Flowers For Algernon" by Daniel Keyes; "Winesburg Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson; Orwell's essays, the stories of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Chekhov and Tim Gautreaux; Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"; Austen's "Emma"; Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto"; the memoirs "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang, "Another Life" by Michael Korda and "Black Boy" by Richard Wright; McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove"; "The God Of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy; the novels of Alan Furst and James Ellroy; Howard Bahr's "The Black Flower."
A King Under Siege: Book One of The Plantagenet Legacy
Description
<p>Richard II found himself under siege not once, but twice in his minority. Crowned king at age ten, he was only fourteen when the Peasants' Revolt terrorized London. But he proved himself every bit the Plantagenet successor, facing Wat Tyler and the rebels when all seemed lost. Alas, his triumph was short-lived, and for the next ten years he struggled to assert himself against his uncles and increasingly hostile nobles. Just like in the days of his great-grandfather Edward II, vengeful magnates strove to separate him from his friends and advisors, and even threatened to depose him if he refused to do their bidding. The Lords Appellant, as they came to be known, purged the royal household with the help of the Merciless Parliament. They murdered his closest allies, leaving the King alone and defenseless. He would never forget his humiliation at the hands of his subjects. Richard's inability to protect his adherents would haunt him for the rest of his life, and he vowed that next time, retribution would be his.</p>
Story Behind The Book
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO, A LARGE CONFEDERATE FORCE MARCHED DOWN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY AND THEN HEADED FOR THE UNION CAPITAL. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT REMAINS ONE OF THE GREAT WHAT-IFS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. OUT OF IT COMES AN EPIC STORY OF BLOOD AND SUSPENSE.
June 1864: On a lonely road in the Shenandoah, federal agent Nathaniel Truly intercepts a horse-drawn carriage. What he discovers inside it sends him and his young partner Bartholomew Forbes on a quest to solve a string of ghastly murders. Meanwhile, ominous bits of intelligence point to a disaster-in-the-making: General Jubal Early’s Confederate host is set to invade Maryland and strike at Washington, D.C. Even as Truly and Forbes connect the murders to a scheme that will ensure the capital’s downfall, skeptical superiors leave the pair to struggle alone. The darkness and depravity of the case threaten to consume the widower Truly, along with those he holds dearest–his son Ben, a lieutenant leading a company of black troops; his de facto adoptive daughter Sapphira, plucked from an auction block years before, now frustrated with the limits of her existence; his radiant daughter Anna, enthralled with a suitor who Truly can scarcely tolerate. All their fates–and that of an entire nation–will soon be swept into the merciless vortex of "Lucifer’s Drum."
Reviews
<div style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial, sans-serif;line-height:normal;">"Invigorating...MacKinnon keeps the plot moving...An epic novel in which the historical and thriller elements enrich each other." --<span class="il">Kirkus</span> Reviews</div>
