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Author and Novelist Glynn Young

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Meeting with a Monthly Book Club on “Brookhaven”

April 2, 2025 By Glynn Young 4 Comments

Last week, I sat with seven or eight members of a local St. Louis book club. I was there at their invitation to discuss my historical novel Brookhaven, which they’d chosen for their monthly reading. I was there to talk about the book and answer their questions.

The hostess was more than knowledgeable about the Civil War, having an ancestor who served on the Union side. She even had his picture and other memorabilia. Her husband had an ancestor who published Origins of the Late War in 1866.

As usually happens when you talk with engaged and knowledgeable readers – really engaged readers – you’re the one who comes come away with a new understanding of your own work. 

Brookhaven

What was the inspiration for the story?

My family history, supposedly passed down from my great-grandfather Samuel Young, who was a Civil War veteran. The family story was that he was too young at the start of the war, so he became a messenger boy. At the end of the war, he had to make his way home on foot from the Eastern Theater to southern Mississippi. 

What a great story!

As I discovered in the middle of writing Brookhaven, it was also untrue. Completely. I had to piece together the real story from U.S. Census records, family memories from another branch, old military records, and the family Bible. The received story was so untrue that I suspect someone was pulling someone’s leg, or the story was artfully embroidered by people who weren’t there. My father, for example, said that we came from a long line of shopkeepers who never owned slaves. The census records tell a very different story. We came from a long line of farmers who had indeed owned slaves.

Women’s fashions in 1915

Any other inspirations for the book?

In early 2022, my wife found a reference to a book conserver in St. Louis, and I turned over the family Bible to repair what could be repaired. He did a great job; he also found a lock of auburn hair in the Bible. Given that all the recorded family records were in my great-grandfather’s hand, the lock likely belonged to my great-grandmother Octavia. She died at 44; my great-grandfather never remarried even though he was 43 when she died and lived until he was 75. That lock of hair and his remaining a widower told me there was a love story here.

How long did it take to write Brookhaven?

The writing itself took about eight months, but it wasn’t a solid eight months of non-stop writing. The research took considerably longer; I started reading about the Civil War in 2016, I think inspired by the red-blue divide that was just beginning to rage in contemporary America. The emotions aroused today are not unlike the emotions aroused prior to the Civil War, although the reasons were and are considerably different.

And the story is not just about the Civil War, of course, because it’s actually set in 1915, fifty years after the war ended. So that required two research efforts, like the clothes men and women wore, the kinds of automobiles driven, what you would see at county fairs, whether indoor plumbing was available in small-town Mississippi, and a whole lot more. One historical fact I learned that becomes a small part in the story was that Brookhaven in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a large Jewish population, unusual for a small Southern town.

Men’s fashions in 1915

How do you write? Do you have a set time each day?

My wife will tell you that I’m always writing, even when I’m not. Brookhaven was written in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. The manuscript came with me when we spent three weeks in London in 2023, and I worked on it there and on the plane both ways as well. When I’m not sitting in front of the desktop or laptop, I’m often writing and rewriting in my head, like when I take long walks.

Do you write from an outline or plan?

No. I write from an idea in my head, but not from an outline. There’s a phrase for it, “writing into the dark.” When I start writing, I don’t know how the story is going to end. One of the main characters, the young reporter Elizabeth Putnam, was a relatively late addition to the story, because I kept stumbling over the need for a reason that the story was being told 50 years later. It was another main character, Sam McClure the Civil War veteran, who looked me in the eye one day and said, “You know, you really need a reason for this story being told in 1915.” Writing into the dark mean you learn to trust your characters. I know it sounds bizarre, but that’s how I write.

Related:

Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.

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

How My Novel Originated in the Family Bible.

Relearning Civil War History to Write a Novel.

10 Great Resources for Teaching the Civil War.

Top photograph: The Brookhaven, Miss., train station about 1915.

Three Reviews for “Brookhaven”

January 2, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

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.

“Brookhaven” is Published!

December 13, 2024 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

It’s always a milestone in a life when a new book is published. Brookhaven, a historical novel about the Civil War and what happened after, has made its appearance in the world.

It’s not a novel about battles and military strategy. Instead, it’s about the people who were involved, some directly and some indirectly (and virtually every American alive at the time was affected). 

This is the summary:

“In 1915, young reporter Elizabeth Putnam of the New York World is assigned a story on the Gray Wisp. New information has come to light about this Confederate spy in the Civil War, a figure of legend, myth, and wildly competing claims. What no knows is the man’s identity. The reporter follows leads which eventually bring her to the small Mississippi town of Brookhaven. He agrees to tell his story, a tale of North and South, loss in wartime, narrow escapes from death in battles, family survival, the poetry of Longfellow, and love. And Elizabeth soon finds her own story has forever become part of the Gray Wisp’s.”

Brookhaven is essentially two stories – that of Sam McClure, who enlisted young and finds himself enrolled as a spy, and that of Elizabeth Putnam, a young reporter trying to make her way and her name in what was a very male world of journalism.

The book includes a character list (my wife insisted I include one) and a bibliography (I read more books and did more research than I can remember). 

I’ll write more about the inspiration for the book (a movie I saw in 1959 and a family story that turned out to be more legend than fact. For now, it’s feelings of relief, satisfaction, and no-small amount of joy I’m experiencing. And if you want more information, just ask.

Brookhaven is available here on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. 

Related:

A note from T.S. Poetry Press on the release of Brookhaven (including the author’s note).

“Christmas Oranges,” a short story – Cultivating Oaks Press.

“The Canteen” by Trevor Tipton

December 11, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Family memories passed down through the generations can create fascinating stories.

Eighteen-year-old Travis Tipton and his Indiana unit find themselves lost in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. It’s late 1863; the men are cold and they’re increasingly tired of the war. They’ve become separated from the main body of Union General Burnside’s army and need to find their way back. Travis has just gone off guard duty when the Confederates attack. The few Union soldiers are killed; Travis himself is shot directly in the heart and tumbles into the nearby stream.

When he wakes, he discovers he’s still alive, protected by the canteen he’d slung across the chest; the rest of his troop are dead; he’s floating on a log downstream; and the water is freezing. He loses consciousness and later finds himself rescued by a Union-friendly mountain family, who help him recover from frostbite and exposure.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is The-Canteen.jpg

He finds romance, but his adventures are far from over. He eventually leaves the mountain family to find Burnside’s army but soon faces another peril: Confederate bounty hunters. 

Travis’s story is told in the short novel The Canteen by Trevor Tipton. The reason the story’s fictitious hero carries the same last name as the author is because the story is based on family history and a Civil War rifle passed down through the decades. There really was a Travis Tipton from Indiana who fought in the Civil War and married a young woman he met during the war. And one of his descendants would write a novel about the war, loosely based on Travis’s history.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Trevor-Tipton-1-768x1024.jpg
Trevor Tipton

It’s a rich story, filled with anecdotes about real events during the war, including the POW camp at Camp Cahaba in Alabama, which plays a role in the story. (Designed to house 100 soldiers, the camp housed up to 3,000 Union prisoners. Not as bad as Andersonville or some of the POW camps for Confederate POWs in New York and Chicago, Cahaba had its own horror stories.)

Tipton the contemporary author taught for 43 years, using his storytelling skills to make the past become interesting and alive. He lives in northern Indiana.

I learned about The Canteen from an unusual web site / podcast / YouTube channel called American Civil War & UK History (link below). I, too, have a Civil War story passed down through the generations that eventually became a manuscript, and will soon become a published novel.  

Related:

Trevor Tipton talks about The Canteen with American Civil War & UK History.

Save Your Editorial Cuts and Deleted Scenes

August 7, 2024 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I had several pieces of a novel-in-progress that I’d set aside from the manuscript. Two fell outside the overall timeline; I’d cut several others because, while they were interesting, detracted from the main flow of the story. One was most of an entire scene; one involved a character than I’d cut; and one simply had way too much detail for the short scene that it was.

But I’d kept them all, saved in a file on my computer as well as in my own head.

I was also working as a contributing editor for an online magazine, published several times a year and each issue centered on a theme. The editor was seeking articles, poems, and stories for the Christmas issue, and I remembered one of my cut pieces from the novel-in-progress.

It was a Christmas story, but it needed a bit of work. I pulled it from its Word file on my computer and began to read, edit, revise, and write. It needed work; reading it now, I’d still do more revising. But I submitted it, and it was accepted and duly published. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Photograph by Alexander Grey via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Shiloh” by Shelby Foote

November 22, 2023 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Shelby Foote (1916-2005) was a journalist, writer, and historian best known for his three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative, published between 1958 and 1974. His writings about the war and the South generally tilted in the direction of the Lost Cause, which means he’s as far out of favor with historians today as he can be. And yet his scholarship and depth of research were impressive.

Foote also wrote six novels, one of which was entitled Shiloh, published in 1952. As the title indicates, it was about the Battle of Shiloh, fought April 6-7, 1862, in southern Tennessee very close to the Mississippi border. It was something of a seesaw battle, in that the Confederates under Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard clearly won the first day, only to see their victory turned into defeat the second day by the Union forces under Ulysses Grant and Don Carlos Buell. There were some 24,000 casualties, the total of both sides, and Shiloh has the dubious distinction of being one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

The name “Shiloh” came from Shiloh Church located near Pittsburgh Landing on the Tennessee River (the battle is also sometimes called the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing). “Shiloh,” interestingly enough, means “peace.”

Foote’s novel is less of a traditional novel and more like seven connected short stories, each with a different narrator. The story moves back and forth between Confederate and Union perspectives. It’s told by a lieutenant and aide-de-camp to General Johnston; a captain in the 53rd Ohio; a private and rifleman in the 6th Mississippi; a private and cannoneer for the 1st Minnesota; a scout in Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry; a squad with the 23rd Indiana; and then Johnston’s aide-de-camp again, listed as “unattached” because Johnston has been killed in battle. 

Shelby Foote

These men, representing both sides, take the reader through the battle and its different aspects. Palmer Metcalfe, the aide-de-camp who provides the beginning and the ending entries, gives a more strategic, step-by-step description. In fact, the first chapter reads more like history than it does a novel. But we see the attacks, the movements, the deaths, the prisoners taken, and ultimately the general carnage that produced such a high casualty rate.

In Foote’s hands, it’s the battle itself that’s the main character and the main story. It’s less about the men who fought it and more about the inevitable turnings of a great wheel of death and destruction.

The Union dead were buried in individual graves; the Confederate dead were buried in several mass, and unmarked, graves. It was here that a tradition started sometime later. Confederate mothers and wives placed flowers on their sones’ and husbands’ graves. Seeing the bare Union graves, they placed flowers on those as well. When Northern mothers and wives heard the story, the reciprocated in likewise fashion. Some good and some understanding did come from that terrible conflict.

Related:

Battle at Shiloh: The Devil’s Own Two Days – Wide Awake Films.

Top illustration: Battle of Shiloh by Thure De Thulstrup for Harper’s Magazine, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Meet the Man

An award-winning speechwriter and communications professional, Glynn Young is the author of three novels and the non-fiction book Poetry at Work.

 

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