Title: Of Blood and Brothers: Book Two
Author: E. Michael Helms
Publisher: KoehlerBooks
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 265 pages
“I swallowed the last of my coffee, reached for the pot and poured another cup.”
Cup after coffee cup, I drank and read the second installment of E. Michael Helms Civil War series.
When life is hard, it’s nice to escape into another century’s problems. I suppose that’s the root of the issue when it comes to historical and science fiction lovers. We like to flee into other eras when humans are the same, but the world is so different.
My favorite tidbit about Helms series is that he was inspired by two elderly brothers he once knew as a boy, who had a Confederate veteran father. On his acknowledgements page he tells them, though they are long gone, that “It was your voices that gave rise to the voices of Daniel and Elijah Malburn.” As a fiction writer myself, those tiny details make my heart swoon, because so often we writers are asked where our ideas come from, and so often we are unable to precisely pinpoint it. Ideas sort of sprout and grow from nothing more than a vibe or a passing fancy, very rarely rooted in much of substance other than things our subconscious has gathered and created from nearly thin air. That Helms remembers these gentleman who told him stories as a boy is marvelous to my scattered mind.
This is a great piece of fiction to add to a high schooler’s American Civil War studies. The mind wraps itself around facts and truths of an era so much better when the facts are rooted in a riveting story. My favorite thing to do when I study any time in history is to read a biography or political piece side by side with a bit of fiction.
Well done, Helms! Looking forward to reading Deadly Catch, one of another series by Helms that I can’t wait to get my teeth into.
