Our speaker for the August meeting will be Skip Tucker, the author of Pale Blue Light, a new novel on the life, times, and death of Stonewall Jackson. While it is historically accurate and takes the reader through the first battles of the war, this novel is meant to be a thrill ride for WBTS buffs, while humanizing the legendary Stonewall.
Pale Blue Light is a rare espionage thriller set during the War Between the States. Young Rabe Canon leaves his family’s Alabama plantation at the start of the War, befriending Major Thomas Jackson of Virginia Military Institute—later the esteemed Stonewall Jackson. When Jackson suffers a mortal wound at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Canon suspects foul play. Canon undertakes a cross-country journey to discover the truth behind Jackson’s death, one that entangles Canon with a beautiful Yankee spy as he tries to avoid capture in gold-rich California. Mr. Tucker combines historical accuracy with plenty of gunfire and intrigue for an epic, entertaining novel.
Robert Martin with the Montgomery Independent calls the book “impossible to put down,” and Dennis Love, author of Blind Faith, says the “audacious Confederate protagonist might have been one of John Wayne’s greatest roles” if a movie were made of the book. Bobby Horton of “Homespun Songs” fame admits that this is “historical fiction unlike anything folks have read about that terrible conflict.”
Skip Tucker worked for the Jasper (Alabama) Daily Mountain Eagle for ten years as a reporter, editor, and assistant publisher. He became press secretary for George McMillan and then Charlie Graddick in their gubernatorial campaigns and was later deputy press secretary for Governor Jim Folsom. In recent years, he has served as director of Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse and was media director for Judge Graddick’s 2012 campaign for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
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