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Encountering Empire
Patrick Tooban’s Encountering Empire, the second volume in the Calgach Scéla, is a generous, deeply researched historical adventure set in AD 69. At its center is eighteen-year-old Calgach, a gifted Irish leader whose voyage from Ériu to Hispania forms part of a larger strategy for surviving Rome’s expansion. While Calgach navigates pirates, Roman officers, merchants, storms, and unfamiliar customs, a parallel story follows Trad and a politically important wedding party bound for Tara. An older Calgach recounts these events to the young monk Padar, giving the novel the warmth and gravity of a life remembered near its end.
The book’s most distinctive feature is its chorus of storytellers. Calgach, Trad, Aithne, Maor, Róin, Searna, Mergus, and others each contribute a different angle, allowing public events and private emotions to rub against one another. Tooban uses these overlapping accounts to create something close to an oral archive, complete with disagreements, omissions, family legends, and details preserved by chance. The framing conversations between Calgach and Padar can be leisurely, but that measured rhythm suits a novel fascinated by the way memory becomes history.
Tooban’s world feels especially vivid when people are working. Ships need water, food, rope, experienced hands, and favorable tides. Gold must be reshaped into objects that Romans will recognize as legitimate trade goods. Hospitality creates obligations, gift-giving establishes authority, and a commercial agreement can matter as much as a military victory. The book’s attention to law, ritual, navigation, medicine, language, and household life gives the setting real weight. Rome emerges through warehouses, taxes, contracts, military rivalries, villas, and ports, while the Celtic world is presented as sophisticated, politically complex, and connected by the sea.
Calgach himself has the bright force of a saga hero. He commands weather, faces a bear, wins the loyalty of crews, and disarms suspicious Romans with impeccable Latin. His near-mythic competence gives the story much of its pleasure, while his recurring visions of the black crow reveal the strain beneath that confidence. The people around him supply the novel’s richest emotional textures: Mamek’s fussy brilliance, Trad’s subtle statecraft, Aithne’s fierce spiritual authority, and Róin’s devastating grief after Bith’s death. Even the book’s humor grows from character, whether it’s a pompous Roman, a quarrel over beer, or a gull settling a rigged athletic contest.
Encountering Empire is an expansive story about power taking forms beyond conquest. Calgach’s journey accumulates relationships, information, property, trade routes, and obligations, each encounter widening both his influence and the reader’s sense of the ancient world. The closing meeting with the young Trajan lands beautifully because the novel has spent hundreds of pages showing how history can turn on hospitality, curiosity, and a well-timed introduction. Rich with salt air, political cunning, and living memory, Encountering Empire makes the ancient world feel vast, intimate, and thrillingly alive.
Pages: 410 | ISBN: 978-1066798414
Dominique’s Journey / A Mystical Quest Through Love, Loss and Becoming / Per Asperum in Lucem
Dominique’s Journey, by D. J. Pratt, is an ambitious historical and spiritual adventure built around one man’s search for meaning, love, and a truth he can sense long before he can fully understand it. Beginning in 16th-century Europe, Dominique Guillaume follows a path set in motion by Léonide, the mysterious woman whose brief presence changes the direction of his entire life. His travels carry him through the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman world, Persia, and eventually India, and Pratt gives each stage a purpose beyond changing the scenery. Dominique is constantly being reshaped by the people he meets, including lovers, friends, teachers, soldiers, mystics, and family. What starts as a physical journey gradually becomes an examination of identity, faith, connection, and the possibility that some relationships reach farther than a single lifetime.
One of the book’s most interesting choices is the amount of time it gives Dominique to change. His transformation doesn’t happen through one revelation. He learns through friendship, desire, danger, grief, religion, language, discipline, and years of occasionally frustrating spiritual practice. That gives the novel an unusually patient rhythm. The later sections at Shambhala become especially immersive as Dominique works through the Purple Lotus and its chakra-based veils under the guidance of Leela Devi. There’s a lot of Hindu, yogic, Buddhist, Sufi, and mystical terminology here, but those ideas are woven directly into Dominique’s experiences. Leela’s journal entries are also a smart addition because they let us watch Dominique’s transformation from outside his own head. More importantly, they turn what could have been a solitary enlightenment story into something more emotionally complicated as teacher and student become increasingly bound to each other.
Readers of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist will recognize some familiar territory. Both novels follow a traveler who leaves the life he knows because something deeper seems to be calling him, and both treat chance meetings, intuition, love, and apparent coincidence as parts of a larger spiritual pattern. Dominique’s Journey, though, takes that basic idea into a much larger and denser world. Pratt spends considerable time on history, competing religious traditions, sexuality, philosophy, reincarnation, and the mechanics of spiritual awakening. Dominique’s repeated idea that he’s becoming an event within the universe captures the book particularly well. The journey isn’t simply about arriving at Shambhala. It’s about watching an identity slowly become porous enough to connect with other people, other traditions, and ultimately the larger fabric of existence.
I liked the way the novel links love to transformation. Léonide motivates Dominique’s journey, Avice and others teach him different forms of intimacy and connection, and Leela eventually becomes inseparable from the spiritual culmination of his quest. By the time Dominique reaches the final veil, the book has spent decades of his life preparing for a choice between release and return, so his decision carries real thematic weight. The epilogue then reaches backward and forward through time to reshape what we thought we understood about Léonide, Dominique, and the mysterious bond connecting them. It gives the story a circular quality that suits its recurring images of threads, waterwheels, rebirth, and lives crossing across time. Dominique’s Journey is the kind of historical fantasy that wants adventure, romance, philosophy, and mysticism occupying the same space, and its strongest moments come when all four finally converge. For readers who enjoy philosophical historical fiction, the novel’s depth and layered exploration of spirituality, history, and identity will be part of its appeal.
Pages: 456 | ASIN : B0HFM6ZMT7
Recipient of the Literary Titan Book Award
Writing is Like Sculpting
The Summer of ’76 follows a young girl as a secret time machine sends her from Bicentennial-era Massachusetts into the American Revolution, where she must protect her family’s farm and uncover its buried legacy. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I began this story remembering an abandoned shed hidden in the woods behind my childhood home in Massachusetts. My friends and I used to imagine who lived there and why. While I was writing, the words of Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride”, played in my head. I learned it when I was Betsy’s age and am still in awe of the brave people Longfellow memorialized. I knew I had to pay them tribute.
How did you balance the novel’s time-travel adventure with its more emotional story about family, healing, and legacy?
Reading each chapter out loud helped me think like a reader. I also asked for feedback from other authors I trust and respect. Writing is like sculpting. Little by little, I removed details that didn’t move the plot forward and added others that did until I knew I was done.
Betsy feels curious, impulsive, funny, and authentically twelve. How did you develop her narrative voice?
I was Betsy’s age in 1976. It was a more innocent time, which is why I picked it. I relied on my inner child to craft her point of view. Betsy comes to believe we can each make a difference, as do I.
What kind of historical research did you conduct to make Colonial life accessible and engaging for middle-grade readers?
I researched everything! The topics included the American Revolutionary War, life in Colonial Massachusetts, the Massachusett people, and the battles of Lexington and Concord. I visited Revolutionary landmarks in both towns and spoke with a number of people to get the details right.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
Twelve-year-old Betsy Ross thought the worst thing about the summer of 1976 was missing camp and being stuck on her grandmother’s farm in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her father has suffered a devastating emotional breakdown, her family is on the verge of losing their New York apartment, and now Betsy is trapped cleaning horse stalls and breathing through the smell of manure.
But the Ross Family Farm has secrets.
Hidden beneath the barn is a mysterious cellar, a forbidden button, and a journey through history Betsy never meant to take. When greedy developers threaten the farm and corner Betsy and her new friend Nate underground, they make a desperate choice that sends them hurtling back in time-to April 19, 1775.
The day the Revolutionary War began.
Now Betsy and Nate must survive Colonial America, avoid suspicion, and uncover the truth about Betsy’s family legacy before history-and their own future-is changed forever. Along the way, Betsy begins to realize that healing her father’s broken spirit may depend on understanding the generations of Rosses who came before him.
Blending heart, humor, mystery, and adventure, The Summer of ’76 is a fast-paced middle-grade novel about courage, family, friendship, and discovering where you truly belong.
Man of Determination
Season of Life follows a free Black farmer in the aftermath of the Civil War who returns home only to be drawn into military intelligence alongside a Union spy. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve always been fascinated by the American Civil War. It was such a convulsive rupture of the American Republic. At first that fascination was with the military aspects, but gradually expanded to other facets of the war such as military intelligence and espionage, which grew to almost an art on the Union side. The effects of the war on the civilian population were both terrible and fascinating — it was fought in towns and rural areas across the country, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Many people lost everything: homes, farms, property. War is a callous and uncaring consumer of people’s lives. The military aftereffects of battle at this time astonished me. This was an age when the medical arts were still in their infancy. Germ theory was only just beginning (Louis Pasteur only published his work on microorganisms in 1861, and Joseph Lister’s experiments with carbolic acid as a disinfectant in surgery only began in 1865, after the war had ended). Also shocking was the lack of forethought given to the treatment of the inevitable wounded organizationally, in a time when weapons like the rifled musket increased casualties exponentially. Civilian volunteers became common and vital after battles. Season of Life was my attempt to try to bring all these things together…with a surreal twist.
How much of Basil Biggs’s story is based on the historical figure, and where did your imagination take over?
Historical Fiction is usually, if not always, about filling in the gaps when primary evidence is spotty, incomplete, or sometimes almost non-existent. Basil Biggs was indeed a tenant farmer on the actual battlefield, whose home and farm were devastated by the battle. He lost almost everything, including stock, trampled and burned crops, and a pillaged home. He then went on to become instrumental in the reinterment of Union dead from hastily made graves across the battlefield to the new National Cemetery, a task he did with great respect for the dead. He also inherited the land where the final terrible fight on the third day of the battle occurred, Pickett’s Charge. All of this was recorded. In that slender folio of facts, I saw a man who would not be beaten down, a man of determination and courage and resolve who would do his best for his family, and for others. It is unlikely that he met John Babcock of the Bureau of Military Intelligence and was conscripted into espionage work. But not impossible. A man of his character and resolve could have risen to dangerous work like that. It is unlikely he would have met Cornelia Hancock at the field hospital at Camp Letterman, but also not impossible, given the nature of his task at re-burying men, and his obvious quality and care for others. And of course the entity of Wesley Culp was my creation, but a useful one to bring my main characters together.
Basil is constantly aware of the realities of race while navigating Union military circles. How important was it to portray those complexities honestly?
This was an age of great racism in the United States, and not only in the South. It permeated every aspect of the country (and one could say it still does today). Books like Leon F. Litwack’s North of Slavery were instrumental in giving me the tools to deal with this respectfully and honestly. It was clear that in the Federal Army there were many men who did not fight so much for the end of slavery as for the preservation of the Union. A Black man in the North could be free, but he was not equal. The caution, resolve, and courage it took to navigate that state is testimony to their quality. Racism is a persistent sin of humanity and one that needs to be addressed.
The ending leaves readers wondering whether Wesley Culp’s story extends far beyond this novel. Is there more you hope to explore in this world?
The Wesley Culp/Entity character was my observer. His interest in the three main characters is how I drew them together, and how I wanted to highlight the quality of the historical people they are based upon, to show my eternal respect for who they were. As such, I find him very useful and intriguing, and he will appear again, but in a different context and time.
Author Links: Website
Season of Life
Season of Life, by Jeff Janoda, is an absorbing work of Civil War historical fiction that begins in the raw aftermath of Gettysburg. Basil Biggs, a free Black farmer, returns home to find his land torn apart by battle and soon gets drawn into military intelligence work alongside Union spy John Babcock. What starts as a grounded story of survival develops into a historical adventure novel filled with espionage, dangerous travel, battlefield medicine, and a strange encounter with the dead Confederate soldier Wesley Culp. The book has a big canvas, but Basil’s practical concerns about his family, animals, livelihood, and freedom keep it personal.
Janoda gives the historical fiction a lived-in quality through physical details that make the war feel immediate. Roads are clogged with wounded men, homes become improvised hospitals, armies depend on rumors, and civilians are forced to make choices with little reliable information. The story also makes room for Cornelia Hancock, whose nursing work provides a compassionate view of the suffering left behind by military glory. Basil remains the strongest presence, though. He’s observant, stubborn, funny, and deeply conscious of how racism shapes every conversation, job, and moment of danger. His growing friendship with Babcock works because respect builds through shared experience rather than easy declarations.
The novel’s supernatural fiction elements add an eerie current without pulling the story away from its historical setting. Rosalie’s voice, the recurring crows, Wesley Culp’s impossible appearances, and the ancient being behind them turn the book into a blend of historical fantasy and supernatural thriller. That presence plays with fear, belief, memory, and human violence, which fits a landscape already haunted by thousands of deaths. The supernatural mystery becomes more prominent as the characters move behind Confederate lines, giving the middle and later sections the momentum of an espionage thriller while raising questions about whether help offered by a powerful being can ever be trusted.
What stayed with me most was the book’s interest in the lives growing around famous history. Generals and battles matter, but Season of Life focuses on farmers, nurses, scouts, teamsters, servants, wounded soldiers, and Black communities whose experiences are often pushed to the edges of Civil War stories. Its combination of Civil War fiction, historical adventure, supernatural fiction, and military espionage creates a distinctive reading experience with plenty of action and an emotional core. The epilogue gives Basil, Babcock, and Cornelia’s journeys satisfying historical weight, while the final note about Wesley Culp leaves the door open to a much older and stranger story.
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A Heart That’s True
A Heart That’s True is a heartfelt historical adventure about two Lakota cousins, Joseph Cross and White Cloud, who are taken from Montana and sent to the Carlisle Indian School, where survival means holding onto memory, family, and spirit. The book opens with the weight of forced removal, but it also gives the reader a clear emotional anchor in Joseph’s bond with Big Black, a wolf-dog whose own journey mirrors Joseph’s need to remain wild in the truest sense. The line “The human spirit will never die in a heart that’s true” becomes the book’s steady pulse.
Mark Guillerman builds the story like a wide Western trail, moving between railroad depots, school grounds, snowy wilderness, and open prairie. The historical setting gives the book its shape, but the emotional story comes from the characters’ loyalties. Joseph and White Cloud aren’t just trying to get through Carlisle. They’re trying to remember who they are, and that gives even the quieter scenes a lot of feeling.
Big Black is one of the book’s strongest creations. He’s part animal, part legend, and part spiritual companion, and the novel treats him with real reverence. His battles with Clyde Baxter and Moondog Burrows bring danger and momentum, while his connection to Joseph gives the story a more mystical edge. When Joseph finally says, “I was with Big Black,” it feels simple, but it carries the weight of everything the book has been building toward.
The book also has a warm sense of found kindness. Sergeant McKenna, the Johannsen family, Charley, Jedidiah, and others help soften a world that often treats Joseph and White Cloud cruelly. Those moments matter because they don’t erase the pain of the story. Instead, they show how small acts of decency can become part of a person’s way home.
A Heart That’s True is a sincere and sweeping novel about endurance, identity, and the pull of home. It blends frontier adventure, boarding school history, animal legend, and coming-of-age drama into a story that’s easy to care about. What stays with you most is its belief that memory can protect a person, love can travel across great distances, and a true heart can find its way back. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy historical fiction that comes with palpable emotions and true heart.
Pages: 266 | ASIN : B0H17CFBW2
