Experience the mysterious start of the Civil War through a young boy’s perspective in this historically accurate and action-packed adventure/mystery.
Samson and the Charleston Spy
A Lowcountry Adventure Book 1
by Paul A Barra
Genre: Middle Grade Historical Adventure Mystery
The protagonist of SAMSON AND THE CHARLESTON SPY may be the definitive underrepresented voice in middle-grade fiction today: he’s a boy and a Southerner, confronting the Civil War from the Confederate perspective.
When Samson Collier and three sixth-grade friends witness the bombardment of Ft. Sumter offshore from their homes, they decide that the Yankee soldiers at the fort must have been forewarned about the attack-since no one was killed although the structure appeared to be wrecked. They set off to find the spy who told secrets.
During their escapades, they confront slavery (one of the four is the son of a freedman), nativism (another of them is the daughter of a prominent Catholic family), zealotry (a man forming a brigade to fight the North appropriates Sam’s beloved horse) and evil (they are attacked by a highwayman in The Devil’s Hole). Eventually, the children discover a shocking plan to undermine their homeland.
The book is an historically accurate and action-packed adventure/mystery.
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After his visit he headed home, slipping silently under grey Spanish Moss hanging in stringy curls from the live oaks like dead men’s beards. That’s what his friend Sidney always called them when he was telling his scary stories out at the clubhouse on the eve of All Hallows: “Dead men’s beards dancing like devils in the moonlight.” That’s what ol’ Sid said all the time.
Samson shivered a little and moved faster. It was coolish out. He left the cemetery and ran along the hard-packed dirt streets of Charleston. Even when he ran his feet were pretty quiet, so he had no trouble hearing something in the night that stopped him cold. He hunkered down in the shadow of a brick wall that ran around one of the houses coming up on Meeting Street and tried to figure out what was making the slow creaking noises that seemed to be coming down the peninsula from the direction of Calhoun Street. There was nobody around, no candles lit in any windows. Except for the creaking noises the night was ghostly silent. Even the slight breeze that made the Spanish Moss dance in the graveyard had died down.
He tried to slow his breathing; he didn’t want whatever was coming to hear him panting like a hound dog in August. His thumping heart almost stopped when he made out a quivering light in the road. It was moving slow-like, coming closer. The creaking got louder. What could it be? Samson wanted to close his eyes and sink into the bushes beside the wall he was hard up against, but he forced hisself to look at the creature that was approaching. If it was some kind a ghost from the grave, he wanted to see it before it picked him out. He didn’t believe in haints, but his leg muscles was tense anyway, ready to tear outta there.
As the noise drew near, Samson realized it was being made by a dray, a heavy work wagon, being pulled by two black mules who were straining to keep the wagon in motion. Down Meeting Street it come, going so slow that three figures were able to walk alongside it like old, tired men, shuffling along, not talking, heads down. One held a pitch torch that smoked and barely lit them enough for Samson to make them out. He was close enough to smell the burning tar of the torch but he couldn’t tell what was in the dray. He knew it had to be heavy because the animals were breathing hard and leaning into their traces. The wooden wheels squeaked as they turned.
What could the wagon be carrying through the empty city in the black of night? Samson never found out.
The procession groaned past his hiding place, going toward the harbor like a lumbering giant insect. When he reckoned it was far enough by, Samson got to his feet and crept home. Coming up on his house without anyone noticing, he nipped in with a sigh of relief. That daggum ol’ squealing wagon done put the fear of God in him, he had to admit. No one else in the house seemed concerned. They was all sleeping like babies, far as he could tell. There weren’t a sound to be heard.
Upstairs, Samson dressed for bed. He could still feel his heart fluttering and thought he’d have a hard time falling asleep after that fright on the dark street, but his eyes were gritty by then and closed the minute his head sank into the feather pillow. He was still trying to figure out what the creepy wagon was hauling when sleep overtook him.
Five hours later, a crash of thunder over White Point Battery shook the shutters against the window, waking Samson out of a sound sleep. He would a gone back to that sleep ‘cept that he figured it was about time to get up anyway since he could see a blink of the morning sun trying to rise up over the Atlantic out yonder. Since he didn’t hear any rain, what was that thunder he heard?
Samson kicked off the feather comforter and padded across the floor to the window, feeling the dry planks under his feet. When he drew open the shutters a puff of breeze ruffled the loose cotton of his nightshirt. Samson could smell jasmine and the sea. But he couldn’t see them. It was still dark out.
He squinted at a reddish glow in the sky down at the harbor as he yawned and absently scratched the tangle of curls on his head, but he realized it didn’t look like the early sun. Samson couldn’t figure out what caused the mysterious light. It was odd standing there in the cool early morning air, as though the darkness held some secret that was beyond him. He felt a little fluttering in his belly, the feeling he got right before school began each fall. Samson wasn’t afraid exactly—since nothing much had happened except that strange thunder—but he was a little nervous for some reason. The air was dry and it was too early in the year for heat lightning or summer thunderstorms; that was odd too.
He didn’t even know what time it was. Since he wasn’t too tired considering his adventure earlier in the night, Samson figured it might be right before the sun came up, even if he couldn’t see it yet. Maybe that strange light in the sky over the harbor was the sun after all. His window faced east and the water was to the east of his father’s house, he knew that much. While he was contemplating these things and standing by the open window in a sort of foggy state of mind, he heard people moving around downstairs. Maybe they knew something of what was happening outside. He yanked off his nightshirt and pulled on the clothes he wore last night.
Samson’s father was in the kitchen, dressed to go out. He was blowing across a cup of something hot and taking small sips. Tea, he assumed. His father always drank Charleston tea in the morning.
The man smiled without showing his teeth when he saw Samson and nodded. His son replied to his nod, “‘Morning, Daddy.” His daddy was not a big morning person, so that exchange was normal.
Despite the normalcy of the scene in the kitchen, something was wrong down there too, Samson could tell, even if he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was different. Maybe it was going to be one of those days when he went around not quite understanding what the world was all about.
With a little jolt of surprise, the boy realized it was the first time he could remember being in the kitchen on the morning of a school day when the room wasn’t warm. And there was no smell of bacon frying. Darlene was bent over the cookstove stoking up the fire. When she heard Samson greet his father, her shining face broke into a smile.
“I’ll have some warm milk up right quick, Master Samson.”
Before he could reply, his father said, “Don’t bother, Darlene. We’re going out. We’ll be back for breakfast at the regular time.”
“Yessir, Mr. Collier.”
Samson and the slave exchanged a glance. Both of them lifted their eyebrows, but neither spoke. Not only did Mr. Collier speak a full sentence in the early dark, but the boy and his father never left the house without breakfast. Even when the red drum was running in the harbor he ate before they went out fishing. Samson got the distinct impression this was not going to be a normal day.
While taking the reader through enticing mysteries, Barra shares a sense of history and thrill in his works. Using his experiences as a naval officer, writer, and educator, Barra brings the reader a unique perspective on fictional mysteries in a very real and different time.
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Rules for Guns:
Hammett’s Suggestions
By Paul A. Barra
One of the most basic rules of gun handling is: if you point a gun at something, be prepared to shoot that something. That’s Rule #2; Rule #1 is: a gun is always loaded. Those aged rules still apply, both for handguns and long guns; both for shooters and writers.
Of course, your characters in fiction don’t always follow the rules. Readers will not be unduly upset if one of your characters mistakenly shoots someone else. Or even himself. They will be upset, however, if the author of a mystery novel (especially) or any other book or story misidentifies a firearm that appears in his or her work, or makes any other factual error of note. This especially true in historical novels, where many readers take an interest in a certain past era and will note with disgust any literary blunder about that era. People know guns and they know history.
The famed Golden Age writer of mystery fiction Dashiell Hammett once wrote a series of two articles for public consumption—the second because the first proved so popular—in two 1930 editions of The Saturday Evening Post, a popular weekly magazine of the time period. The pieces came about because he studied novels, Hammett wrote, and noted some factual deficiencies he didn’t like. “(I)t is certainly not unreasonable to ask anyone who is going to write a book of any sort to make some effort at least to learn something about his subject. Most writers do. Only detective story writers seem to be free from a sense of obligation in this direction…”
Hammett had occasion to write the articles because he took professional pride in his work and expected other writers to do no less. Once he had researched the errors fellow authors made in their books, he wrote lists of “facts” to educate them, focusing on the handgun that any respectable detective must know and use—at least in the United States. Since Hammett was at the time at the very top of his game, he didn’t have to worry about insulting other writers. Even so, he couched his lessons in polite—even humorous— terms, probably because he knew a lot of fellow writers and didn’t want to impugn their data bases:
Meanwhile, a couple of months’ labor in this arena has convinced me that the following suggestions might be of value to somebody:
(1) There was an automatic (the common term then for a semi-automatic handgun) revolver, the Webley-Fosbery, made in England some years ago. The ordinary automatic pistol, however, is not a revolver. A pistol, to be a revolver, must have something on it that revolves.
What revolves on a revolver (AKA a wheel gun) is the cylinder, which contains five or six chambers (perhaps even seven in some small caliber guns) in which bullets reside. The chambers are accessed by releasing the cylinder to the side (or, in some few models, breaking open the barrel of the gun so that the chambers are exposed at the top). In either case, there is a readily accessible lever which releases the cylinder. It’s all part of old technology that is still popular because a revolver does not rely on spent gases or intricate mechanisms to chamber a fresh round. They do not eject empty brass. Revolvers are famous for firing every time the shooter pulls the trigger. They don’t jam.
Downsides include a shortage of rounds available before needing to reload, heavier trigger pull, and greater kick in larger calibers. Semi-automatics are also faster to pump out rounds. Most police forces and militaries use them exclusively now, but it wasn’t too long ago when the NYPD issued .38 Special revolvers to its 33,000 officers. Shooters with arthritis in their hands find wheel guns easier to manipulate. You can even buy .22 bullets built like small caliber shotgun shells for killing snakes and plinking around your country house.
Dashiell Hammett didn’t offer only sidearm advice to writers, though. He also suggested they remember that “’Youse’ is the plural of ‘you’,” in case you forgot. His advice seems old-fashioned today, but some traditions, such as the use of fingerprints and coroner’s inquests are still around, and a large round (say, a .45 caliber) hitting anyone in his body will knock him down, no matter if it blasts out of a flashy new Sig Sauer or from a heavy old Model 1911. Even today, being shot by a big iron pistol “is quite upsetting at any reasonable range.”
Hammett’s suggestions for writers still apply in many cases, just as the safety rules for handgun use are still important to know and follow—for a writer and his characters.
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Great cover!
Sounds like a really good middle grade story. Thanks for sharing.
I am a big kid, I would love to read this :)
Fun genre, I would pass the book along to my aunt who has 5 grandchildren.
I like the idea of writing a middle grade , historically accurate book about the Civil War, and it is probably a good idea to have the main character be a pre-teen, since he has such an eclectic group of friends. I do wonder how the book addresses both the states rights and the slavery issues, or if they were ignored entirely.
This so sounds like a great read and one that will keep me interested for sure!
This sounds like a great mystery.
This sounds like a great Middle Grade Historical Adventure Mystery!
Great cover
love a giood mystery
My grandson will love it.
Love the cover
Sounds like a good book.
This looks like a good one!
Looks very exciting Do you write in a daily journal?
I like the book details.
Nice cover.
The excerpt is interesting. Thank you for sharing it.
I really like the cover art.
This sounds like an interesting book and I also like the cover.
Question for Author– What are some of your favorite books to read?
nice cover
This book would be a perfect gift for our grandson!
Thank you for sharing the excerpt.
It looks like a good read.
I like the cover! It would be very appealing to kids!
My grandchildren will love this book. Thank you for the giveaway!
Sounds like a book my grandson would enjoy. Congratulations on your book.
Do you have any advice for new writers?
I look forward to reading.
looks like a fun one.
I love the cover! And it sounds so fun. Thank you for the excerpt & guest post! :)
I would love to read this book. I would love to read this book because it offers a unique perspective and the characters seem interesting.
Sounds like a really great book.
The story sound exciting to read.
Nice cover.
Looks like a wonderful book
What fun. Good luck.