Sapphires At War: conflict on several fronts: The unlimited American sapphire lode controlled by a great English jewelry company is engaged in a ruthless struggle with South Africa's De Beers diamond cartel to see who can place their necklaces and rings and tiaras around the most beautiful necks, fingers, and foreheads of European and Oriental elite. That struggle rages at a time when the Great War explodes across Europe and the Near East to spit out the broken bodies of millions of the finest of western civilization's young manhood and shutter the ostentatious castles and dwellings of the moneyed elite: those most likely to acquire costly gems. Set against that tide is an orphan boy from a remote canyon in far-off mountains of the American West; his mother a lovely half-caste, often thought to be a former slave, but strong-willed and self-sufficient with two gold claims of her own; his father a tough prospector and mountain man who, as chance had it, discovered the Yogo sapphire lode-perhaps the greatest gemstone discovery in world history. That discovery was haunted by death and greed, however, as others fought and killed for slices of the action. Jake Hoover could cope with murderous killers from the outside, but the tough mountain man was in over his head when it came to insider moneymen and their fleets of shyster lawyers. So the boy's father abandoned his fabulous discovery, his lover, and his own son for Yukon gold fields and another chance to strike it rich. Still a youth, Naseby Ringgold is falsely accused of stealing raw sapphire stones from the former mine of his father; he flees into the night with a burning hatred for the English company he believes has "stolen" his birthright. Eaten by a desire for revenge, the young man works his way to England and into the bowels of his nemesis, the great English gem firm of Johnson, Walker and Tolhurst, Ltd. And it is there that the young man consumed by hatred and a desire for revenge discovers a war within his own soul as hidden and unknown talents spring wide several gates to unexpected opportunity. Amid it all rages a second internal war of impassioned love exploding against requirements necessary for professional advancement for both Naseby and the beautiful woman he loves. It's a story that tests the patience and honor of both good and bad, strong and weak, those of good will and without. It's a tale whose issues are in doubt until the final pages.
About the Author: There are, I suppose, febrile savants who reject any notion that a person can acquire the writing art outside those hallowed halls of academia. Yet storytellers captured audiences for millenniums before Oxford or Harvard were more than forest enclaves where wild turnips sprout. There's dissent, of course, holding the cloistered academic life to be poor training grounds for the kinds of riveting stories audiences wish to hear or read. My particular PhD came from God's own university of wild places and wilder things. My Culture might best be described as the Campfire kind, backed up against the inky black of star-filled nights, regaling saucer-eyed guests with tales of wilderness adventure, while horses stomped at picket lines and coyotes howled at a rising moon. My doctoral thesis came during three decades of narratives about those wild places and wilder things; wonders saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt; crafted for Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, and Sports Afield. My column was syndicated over two decades to 17 newspapers, and I hosted a coast-to-coast radio show with 210,000 listeners airing on 75 stations across America. Then I turned my attention to books: a baker's dozen novels and wildlife and adventure nonfiction titles, all self-published to great success, all flavored with real-life experiences. What's my point? That one can have adventure AND learn to write very well indeed (despite academic disdain for anyone outside their comfortable inner circle); well enough indeed to tell the conventional publishing world to go to hell--that I'll publish my own stuff.