Book Details:
Book Title: Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See by Bob Rogers
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 333 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: BookLocker
Release date: June 19, 2023
Content Rating: R. My book is rated R because of foul language, rape, infanticide, and homicide.
"Rogers...tells the story [in Two Rivers] with the restraint of a gifted writer. Very highly recommended." - Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
"[Two Rivers is] a fast-paced tale of enslaved people in a land on the brink of war...a novel about the iniquities of slavery in pre-Civil War South Carolina." - Kirkus Reviews
"For me, the standout feature of the work is its ensemble cast and the passion and emotional intelligence that [Bob] Rogers displays in crafting so many different, realistic, and fully fleshed-out viewpoints...Two Rivers is intricately penned with much to experience, be intrigued by, and learn from." - K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
"[Two Rivers is] a fast-paced tale of enslaved people in a land on the brink of war...a novel about the iniquities of slavery in pre-Civil War South Carolina." - Kirkus Reviews
"For me, the standout feature of the work is its ensemble cast and the passion and emotional intelligence that [Bob] Rogers displays in crafting so many different, realistic, and fully fleshed-out viewpoints...Two Rivers is intricately penned with much to experience, be intrigued by, and learn from." - K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
Book Description:
Rich with history, the geriatric romance in Two Rivers entertains and educates. Without fear of causing “discomfort” to some, Two Rivers takes us deep into the lives of two peoples—Africans and Europeans—in 1854 near Charleston, South Carolina.
In Two Rivers, the parallel courtships of enslaved widow Ella wooing 84-year-old widower Posey and Tiffany Plantation manager James’ pursuit of Jacqueline, daughter of a bank president, reveals the side-by-side lifestyles of enslavers and the enslaved.
Attorney James’ dream was to join the elite planter-banker class by any means necessary. Rebuffed by Congressman William Aiken’s daughter, James turned to Jacqueline. Meanwhile, Angolan Ella was determined to marry Posey, whose ancestry was Igbo.
Though enemies from the day James arrived, both Posey and James respected Senator John C. Calhoun—but for vastly different reasons. For James, Calhoun represented the “rule-maker class” he wanted to join. Posey welcomed Calhoun’s prediction of war between white people.
By 1854, the Tiffany family had enslaved over 300 Africans for more than a century on the 1,100-acre slave labor camp that they called the Tiffany Plantation. The Tiffanys were the largest rice producer in South Carolina’s Colleton District. While the toil of enslaved Africans earned untold riches for the Tiffanys, the Africans endured violence inflicted to force increased rice production and profits followed by the indignity of the bodies of loved ones being stolen from their graves and delivered to a medical school.
Rich with history and a cast of unforgettable characters, Two Rivers is a sweeping saga of two peoples—European immigrants and African abductees. Together, they experience courtships, infanticide, homicide, rape, rebellions, revenge, sabotage, storms, high-stakes gambling, grave-robbing, counterfeiting, slave mortgage-backed securities, and more.
“De troubles Posey be sees” in Two Rivers reminds one of Southern Gothic storytelling.
Rich with history, the geriatric romance in Two Rivers entertains and educates. Without fear of causing “discomfort” to some, Two Rivers takes us deep into the lives of two peoples—Africans and Europeans—in 1854 near Charleston, South Carolina.
In Two Rivers, the parallel courtships of enslaved widow Ella wooing 84-year-old widower Posey and Tiffany Plantation manager James’ pursuit of Jacqueline, daughter of a bank president, reveals the side-by-side lifestyles of enslavers and the enslaved.
Attorney James’ dream was to join the elite planter-banker class by any means necessary. Rebuffed by Congressman William Aiken’s daughter, James turned to Jacqueline. Meanwhile, Angolan Ella was determined to marry Posey, whose ancestry was Igbo.
Though enemies from the day James arrived, both Posey and James respected Senator John C. Calhoun—but for vastly different reasons. For James, Calhoun represented the “rule-maker class” he wanted to join. Posey welcomed Calhoun’s prediction of war between white people.
By 1854, the Tiffany family had enslaved over 300 Africans for more than a century on the 1,100-acre slave labor camp that they called the Tiffany Plantation. The Tiffanys were the largest rice producer in South Carolina’s Colleton District. While the toil of enslaved Africans earned untold riches for the Tiffanys, the Africans endured violence inflicted to force increased rice production and profits followed by the indignity of the bodies of loved ones being stolen from their graves and delivered to a medical school.
Rich with history and a cast of unforgettable characters, Two Rivers is a sweeping saga of two peoples—European immigrants and African abductees. Together, they experience courtships, infanticide, homicide, rape, rebellions, revenge, sabotage, storms, high-stakes gambling, grave-robbing, counterfeiting, slave mortgage-backed securities, and more.
“De troubles Posey be sees” in Two Rivers reminds one of Southern Gothic storytelling.
Buy the Book:
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Get Bob's Signature
Bob's eBookshop
Amazon
Amazon CA ~ Amazon UK ~ Amazon AU
B&N ~ BAM ~BookLocker
add to goodreads
Excerpt: Chapter 1: The Burying Ground
At 9:31 pm, Posey’s arrow pierced the grave-robber’s heart. Not far away, a great horned owl sounded, “hoo-h’HOO-hoo-hoo.”
With his mouth agape from pain and surprise, the grave-robber looked down at the shaft of the hickory arrow in the middle of his chest. His black bowler hat fell into the partially opened grave. The man’s grip tightened on his wooden-handled iron meat hook. He staggered backward, then forward, and fell face first into the grave.
Though down and dying, the robber’s fist still held the meat hook used to insert under the corpse’s collar bone and extract it from the box in which was buried. Posey spat in disgust at the thought of his sister ’s body being hoisted from her grave with a meat hook designed to hang the carcass of a hog or cow for butchering. He fought to keep his loathing from interfering with his self-appointed mission of ending, at least for a time, body snatching from this burying ground.
The resurrectionist’s white shirt had made him an easy target in the waxing first quarter moonlight that warm Sunday evening, July thirtieth, in 1854.
Perched on a limb of an ancient live oak draped with Spanish moss, Posey readied another arrow from his crocus quiver. Chuck-will’s-widows’ calls abounded from near and far as they feasted on mosquitoes that they caught in mid-air. Though the small brown birds made Posey’s favorite night music, he did not hear the birds now as he concentrated on finding his nocking point and aiming a second shot.
A digger shoveling at the foot of the grave screamed when his boss tumbled and landed at his feet. Dropping his shovel, he dug his fingers into the damp ground at the edge of the grave and hoisted himself up and out. The former digger ran behind another member of the gang of robbers, who were already scurrying toward their wagon and waiting team of horses.
Though the robbers came from Charleston, the burying ground where they labored was in Colleton District on the north edge of the vast Tiffany rice farm. Tiffany Plantation, as the owner called it, was on the west bank of the wide Pon Pon River that separated Colleton from Charleston District.
Posey’s next arrow stopped the lead runner as it landed less than a foot in front of him. The former digger collided with the back of his halted, trembling comrade.
A deep voice from the tree line at the edge of the burying ground said, “Halt! Don’t move!”
Without moving their feet, both men looked in the direction whence the voice came. One of them flatulated.
nearer great horned owl answered the first, “hoo-h’HOO-hoo-hoo.” The voice from the tree line spoke again. “Return. Gather your comrade. Sell his carcass in place of the body you came for. Of course, you get a better price for a fresh white body.” The voice sounded again with an insidious, blood-curdling laugh.
The stupefied robbers shivered, though the night was warm. The twosome remained frozen in their tracks.
Posey glanced westward at the moon, appearing to rest atop the hundred-foot-tall bald cypress trees of Snuggedy Swamp. The first quarter moon was providing only about thirty percent of its maximum luminosity. It would soon set, about an hour before midnight, leaving only starlight. Posey spoke again in his disguised voice, “Move your asses. You don’t have all night.”
Also Enjoy Bob Rogers' Earlier Novel:
Book Details:
Book Title: First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier's Story by Bob Rogers
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 516 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: BookLocker
Release date: September 19, 2015
Book Title: First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier's Story by Bob Rogers
Category: Adult Fiction (18 +), 516 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: BookLocker
Release date: September 19, 2015
Content Rating: R.
"The book ... is an impressive feat of historical fiction, offering many traditionally underrepresented perspectives in a sprawling work of love and warfare." -- Kirkus Reviews
"An ambitious and lush tale set during the Civil War and Reconstruction." -- Kirkus Reviews
"The Gripping saga of Isaac Rice is a hero's journey. [Don't] be surprised if First Dark ends up as a popular movie. It's also a darn good read."
-- Baltimore Post-Examiner
"First Dark is a powerful story of the underbelly of American history that has been carefully researched and written. Characters are well-developed and believable, and the dialogue and description throughout the book are brilliant." -- Reader's Favorite
"An ambitious and lush tale set during the Civil War and Reconstruction." -- Kirkus Reviews
"The Gripping saga of Isaac Rice is a hero's journey. [Don't] be surprised if First Dark ends up as a popular movie. It's also a darn good read."
-- Baltimore Post-Examiner
"First Dark is a powerful story of the underbelly of American history that has been carefully researched and written. Characters are well-developed and believable, and the dialogue and description throughout the book are brilliant." -- Reader's Favorite
Book Description:
First Dark is a coming-of-age story, an epic adventure, and a compelling examination of the primary feelings that drive human nature – hate, hope, desire, love, loss, grief, revenge, and forgiveness – as seen by Apache, black, Mexican, and white young adults during and shortly after America’s Uncivil War.
The San Francisco Review described Bob Rogers as a rising author who takes readers back to life and times in the early years of the Civil War, blending a brilliant mix of historic persons with his fictional characters. Celebrating the sesquicentennial year of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, Bob Rogers delivers his most ambitious work yet–a novel that spans their first generation–from Charleston and Vicksburg to Appomattox and desert Apache battlefields.
First came dark days that beset Isaac Rice's epic journey–America’s wars to settle the "Negro and Indian problems.”
First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier’s Story–Sesquicentennial Edition (with a foreword by General (Ret) Lloyd “Fig” Newton) is an historically correct action novel that follows Isaac Rice, the Tenth Cavalry, and the women who love him. His nineteenth century saga begins in Charleston and contributes to the story of how twenty-first century America came to be. Telling Isaac’s story, Rogers surrounds a host of diverse fictional characters with an impressive nonfiction cast, including historic political, military, religious figures, and entrepreneurs of that era.
Subsequent volumes follow Isaac’s descendants, ordinary nineteenth and twentieth century working people, into and out of calamities–recessions, panics, droughts, world wars, a depression, natural disasters, and the division of people by race, class, and caste. The view through their eyes serves to enhance twenty-first century readers’ understanding of “how things got this way” in America.
Isaac Rice, a teenager on a South Carolina rice plantation, traveling alone, follows a treacherous waterborne route filled with incredible hardships and danger to escape from slavery. Too young to be a soldier, the Union Army hires him to shovel coal on a gunboat. Thus begins Isaac’s westward journey, in which he encounters storms, stampeding buffalo, and the hate of zealous patriots whose causes are antithetical to the nation he is sworn to defend. Undaunted, he pursues respect and dignity on an odyssey from the middle of the Civil War in South Carolina’s Low Country and the Mississippi Heartland, to the Indian Wars on the Great Plains and deserts of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
Isaac’s is an epic tale of young North Americans coming of age amid the violence of the U.S. Civil War, Indian Wars, Reconstruction, and spillover bloodshed from a Mexican Revolution. Telling Isaac’s story required extensive research of 19th and 20th century books, official documents, and letters, plus multiple visits to relevant geographic locations over a period of twenty years.
A memorable set of characters revolve around Isaac–a Confederate guerilla, a black female activist in a Mississippi Constitutional Convention, a Mescalero Apache warrior, a white Union cavalry sergeant, and a Mexican nurse–who raise their voices and bare their souls as the world they seek constantly changes, bringing tragedy to their lives and danger for Isaac.
First Dark is a coming-of-age story, an epic adventure, and a compelling examination of the primary feelings that drive human nature – hate, hope, desire, love, loss, grief, revenge, and forgiveness – as seen by Apache, black, Mexican, and white young adults during and shortly after America’s Uncivil War.
The San Francisco Review described Bob Rogers as a rising author who takes readers back to life and times in the early years of the Civil War, blending a brilliant mix of historic persons with his fictional characters. Celebrating the sesquicentennial year of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, Bob Rogers delivers his most ambitious work yet–a novel that spans their first generation–from Charleston and Vicksburg to Appomattox and desert Apache battlefields.
First came dark days that beset Isaac Rice's epic journey–America’s wars to settle the "Negro and Indian problems.”
First Dark: A Buffalo Soldier’s Story–Sesquicentennial Edition (with a foreword by General (Ret) Lloyd “Fig” Newton) is an historically correct action novel that follows Isaac Rice, the Tenth Cavalry, and the women who love him. His nineteenth century saga begins in Charleston and contributes to the story of how twenty-first century America came to be. Telling Isaac’s story, Rogers surrounds a host of diverse fictional characters with an impressive nonfiction cast, including historic political, military, religious figures, and entrepreneurs of that era.
Subsequent volumes follow Isaac’s descendants, ordinary nineteenth and twentieth century working people, into and out of calamities–recessions, panics, droughts, world wars, a depression, natural disasters, and the division of people by race, class, and caste. The view through their eyes serves to enhance twenty-first century readers’ understanding of “how things got this way” in America.
Isaac Rice, a teenager on a South Carolina rice plantation, traveling alone, follows a treacherous waterborne route filled with incredible hardships and danger to escape from slavery. Too young to be a soldier, the Union Army hires him to shovel coal on a gunboat. Thus begins Isaac’s westward journey, in which he encounters storms, stampeding buffalo, and the hate of zealous patriots whose causes are antithetical to the nation he is sworn to defend. Undaunted, he pursues respect and dignity on an odyssey from the middle of the Civil War in South Carolina’s Low Country and the Mississippi Heartland, to the Indian Wars on the Great Plains and deserts of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
Isaac’s is an epic tale of young North Americans coming of age amid the violence of the U.S. Civil War, Indian Wars, Reconstruction, and spillover bloodshed from a Mexican Revolution. Telling Isaac’s story required extensive research of 19th and 20th century books, official documents, and letters, plus multiple visits to relevant geographic locations over a period of twenty years.
A memorable set of characters revolve around Isaac–a Confederate guerilla, a black female activist in a Mississippi Constitutional Convention, a Mescalero Apache warrior, a white Union cavalry sergeant, and a Mexican nurse–who raise their voices and bare their souls as the world they seek constantly changes, bringing tragedy to their lives and danger for Isaac.
Bob Rogers is the author of the historical novels First Dark and The Laced Chameleon, which earned critical acclaim from Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Review, and Baltimore Examiner. Bob is a meticulous researcher, known to spend extra time, magnifying glass in hand, deciphering 18th and 19th-century handwriting for “just the facts, ma’am.” Bob, a former U.S. Army captain and combat leader during the Vietnam War in Troop A, 1/10 Cavalry, finds his topographic experiences useful in field research. If not closeted in libraries or museums, you are likely to find him walking centuries-old rice fields, battlefields, or in a canoe following the river trails of his characters.
He studied at South Carolina State University and the University of Maryland.
Win a hardback copy of Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See, courtesy of the author (one winner) (USA only) (ends Nov 17)
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