Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Glynn Young

Kindness on the Mountaintop

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The Winter 2025 edition of Cultivating Oaks Press is now online, and the theme of this issue is kindness. You can read a number of essays and articles on the subject, and the authors include Annie Nardone, Amelia Friedline, Tom Darin Liskey, Rob Jones, Amy Malskeit, Lara d’Entremont, Matthew Clark, Christina Brown, Junius Johnson, Kirk Manton, Sam Keyes, Sheila Vamplin, and several more.

I have a short story on the theme, “Kindness on the Mountaintop,” and you can read it here.

Photograph by Jess Zoerb via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Two More Reviews for “Brookhaven”

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Brookhaven Full Cover-confidential

Two additional reviews of Brookhaven have been published on Amazon. 

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written. Impossible to put down.

This wonder of a Civil War novel captivated me from the first page. Set ostensibly in 1915 when the only female reporter for the NEW YORK WORLD is sent south to learn details about a mysterious Confederate spy, author Glynn Young spins a family saga that details the heartache and loss not only of the war specifically but the broken relationships and twisted lives that came out of those devastating years.

What begins as a mystery to solve quickly evolves into an elderly man’s own story of the nation’s worst war. Set primarily in the town of Brookhaven, Mississippi, and the homes of a family still caught in the grasp of the war’s aftermath, the story moves back and forth between 1915 and the 1860s, taking readers on a personal tour of troop movement in the eastern border states, battles of Gettysburg and Wilderness, General Lee’s surrender, and ultimately, a very satisfying finale.

As I read, the book and its characters felt very real. Not my ancestors, certainly, but people I learned to cheer for and care about as the ways of war and the world had their effect. That turned out to be not too surprising, as the author wrote an end-of-the-book note that BROOKHAVEN was inspired by tales he heard from his own family as he was growing up.

Finally, marvel of marvels for people like me who always “want to know more” after I’ve finished a historical novel, author Young provides readers with a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book that ranges from general Civil War books, to books about the war in Mississippi, to letters and memoirs that offer personal insights into those years.

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully told, fascinating in historical detail

Glynn Young has crafted a beautiful, engrossing story that shines with historical details. I’ve always loved historical fiction and Brookhaven does not disappoint. The many twists and turns in the story made this one a page-turner for me. The author’s note at the end of the book relates how the book was inspired by an old family story, which I found to be so interesting. I could tell by the way the author handled the characters with such integrity that this story holds a special place in his heart. This book kept me company over the holidays and through a winter snowstorm. It was a very good companion.

7 Tips for the Novice Historical Novel Writer – Learned the Hard Way

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Writing one historical novel does not make one an expert in the genre. I have written exactly one historical novel, Brookhaven, a romance set in the Civil War era and in 1915.

To write Brookhaven, I didn’t turn to how-to works by historical novelists, historians, or romance writers, or read articles on the subject on web sites. In fact, I never intended to write a historical novel at all. Because I had the time, I began to pursue a lifelong interest in the Civil War, with a side-interest in the role of my great-grandfather.

At some point, I told myself, “This is a story worth telling.” And I began to write. 

I also continue to do research, because writing this kind of story demands it. What did people wear? What did they eat? How would they send a letter when railroads and the mail service weren’t functioning? What were prisons like for captured soldiers? How does a society function when social order breaks down?

I learned some lessons along the way. Each was hard-learned and hard-earned. I stopped counting the times I had to go back and revise something, sometimes extending to almost everything I’d previously written.

If you’re thinking about writing a historical novel, I have seven suggestions for how to do it and not do it. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Top photograph: a page from the 1850 census, listing the members of the Franklin Young family in Pike County, Mississippi.

Three Reviews for “Brookhaven”

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An author is always thrilled to receive a review – and doubly thrilled when it’s a positive one. My new historical novel / romance Brookhaven has (so far) three five-star reviews on Amazon; here they are.

Immensely satisfying

A quick admission, I usually have to be drug kicking and screaming to read new novels. So, when this book was placed into my hands, I’m now glad my tantrum was brief and that I settled into both read and enjoy Brookhaven. The novel is lovely, sad, joyful, redemptive, and all around a thoroughly satisfying example of entertaining storytelling. Without giving away the plot, the author artfully weaves in the awful complexity of the Civil War, along with its immediate aftermath, into the lives of the generations that came after, and all with a most satisfying conclusion.

 “Brookhaven” kept me up late wondering what would happen next!

“Brookhaven” is a retrospective novel set amidst the grim realities of the American Civil (and often not-so-civil) War and its aftermath. While Young’s descriptions of the war feel so authentic and in the moment, it is his love story—one of romantic love and, even more, love of a place and its people—that drew me in. Young’s writing is clear and concise, and he weaves together a complicated tale that is engaging, endearing, and enlightening. I don’t have a lot of time to read, but the book managed to keep me up late at night wondering what would happen next. I expect it will do the same for many other readers.

I couldn’t put it down.

I’m by no means an avid reader and I rarely read a book in a couple of days, but I couldn’t put this book down. It is very well written and the time period of the Civil War was obviously researched very well. The book will keep the reader engaged from beginning to end.

An Inspiration for “Brookhaven”: The Family Bible

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In the early 1980s, the Young family Bible was passed down to me from my father. We had looked at it together much earlier, especially the family records it contained. All of the entries for births and deaths, beginning in 1802 and ending in 1890, were in the same hand, presumably my great-grandfather’s. 

For years after I received it, I did the time-honored family thing: kept it wrapped in brown paper and twine and on a closet shelf. I did eventually buy an acid-free box to store it in, but it was fragile. The binding was coming apart, the ink on the family records was fading, and some of the pages were loose.

My wife read a story in St. Louis Magazine about a local book conservator who had trained at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. In early 2022, I contacted him, we made an appointment, and he offered an initial assessment of what it would cost. He also found something that had been missed for decades – tucked in among one of the Prophets was an envelope containing a lock of auburn hair, presumably that of my great-grandmother, Octavia Montgomery Young. 

I had copies of the family records, and it was these that I poured over and compared to listings in Family Search. Surprisingly, the Biblical records and the online listings were surprisingly identical. But the online list omitted a name contained in the Bible, that of Jarvis Seale, with the date of death recorded as April 6, 1862. Whoever he was, and no one in the family seemed to know (my father guessed a cousin), he was considered important enough for my great-grandfather to record his death. 

I stayed mystified, until I investigated the date. It was the Battle of Shiloh. 

More digging found he was the husband of one of my great-grandfather’s sisters. Mystery solved.

That discovery led me to consider two other dates – the ones for my great-grandfather’s two brothers. They, too, died in the Civil War, leaving my great-grandfather, still a teenager, as the only surviving son.

He was the one who bought the Bible and started the records. My book conservator said that the Bible was sold door-to-door by the tens of thousands in the late 1860s and 1870s. Many bought the book to record family records; so many people had died in the war that surviving families on both sides of the conflict were determined to keep a record. And too many, like Jarvis Seale, had been buried in unmarked mass graves.

I looked at the dates for those deaths, and I told myself there was a story here, a story of how a family survived the Civil War. 

Those deaths, and the lock of my great-grandmother’s hair, eventually became one of the inspirations for my historical novel (and historical romance) Brookhaven.

Related:

Restoring the Family Bible – and More.

The Mystery Man in the Family Bible.

Top photograph: a page from the Bible’s family records, before restoration.

The Paperback Arrived!

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The paperback edition of Brookhaven just arrived. I downloaded the Kindle version last Thursday, but it is something else to hold the physical book in my hands. Behind it are a few of the books (but only a few) I used for research.