Book Details:
Book Title: The Revolutionist by Robert Tucker
Category: Adult Fiction, 649 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing
Release date: 12/03/2017
Tour dates: May 27 to June 28, 2019
Content Rating: PG + M (This book does not contain any gratuitous violence. Any depicted violence is relevant to the historical period, as are scenes of white slave prostitution, sexual and physical abuse, and one of an abortion mill. They are written with sensitivity as to time and place and with appropriate literary language.)
Book Description:
Two different families escape from the political tyranny of their respective homelands, the Josephsons from Sweden and Matias and Kurt Bauman, brothers from Germany and Austria Hungary, with the aid of a Viennese opera diva, Sophie Augusta Rose, and Jean Guenoc, a former Jesuit priest, family friend and protector and partisan of the French underground. Their journey brings them to America in the throes of the industrial revolution during the 1890s and early 1900s.
Ingrid and Olaf Josephson settle on a small wheat farm in North Central Minnesota to raise their children, Newt and Julie. Among the Jewish entrepreneurs forced to leave Germany and Austria-Hungary, Matias and Kurt Bauman re-establish their transportation company in Chicago, Illinois. In search of a secret list of insurgent social democrats, the bounty hunter assassin, Luther Baggot, tracks his victims to the American heartland. Following the murder of their mother and father, Newt, Julie, and their friends, Aaron and Beth Peet, hide from the killer in a Northern Minnesota logging camp. Believing the children have taken possession of the list, Luther tracks them down and they are forced to flee again, this time to Chicago where a different world opens up to them as they are thrust into the turmoil and violence of an urban society and economy careening into the new century.
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The sequel to The Revolutionist. Can be read as a stand-alone novel too.
Book Details:
Book Title: Burton Blake by Robert Tucker
Category: Adult Fiction, 518 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing
Release date: 1/06/2019
Tour dates: May 27 to June 28, 2019
Content Rating: G (Depictions of violence are minimal. No bad language, religious expletives, sex scenes, drug use or underage drinking.)
Book Description:
In this sequel to the well-received The Revolutionist, the American journey of three generations locks the neophyte company president, Burton Blake, in a vicious struggle with corporate intrigue, financial greed, and social corruption. Born to a taxi dancer at the beginning of the Second World War, Burton’s father, Elias Blake, never knows his natural father, who is killed in the South Pacific. He is raised by his mother and stepfather from her second marriage who makes his fortune during the post-war real estate boom of the ’50s. Their untimely death by his business partner leaves the boy Elias in the guardianship of his mother’s best friend and her marine vet husband who introduces him to the macho culture of guns and hunting.
Elias’s youth is influenced by the adult world’s drive for personal material gain. Over the next decades, he expands his parents’ original real estate empire into the diversified multi-divisional, multi-national corporation that he leaves to his son, Burton. Upon his forced return from traveling and working with oppressed third world people, Burton learns increasingly more about the true nature of his deceased father as he undertakes the challenges of leading the company in a new direction.
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Meet the Author:
Robert is published by Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing under a multi-book contract. The author of four previous earlier novels, Robert infuses his books with unique dynamic stories and characters that portray social and cultural conflicts of their time. His career encompasses many years as a business consultant that have given him access to a wide range of organizations and an appreciation for people in all areas of society. His life experience is reflected in the literary quality of his work. Born and raised in the Middle-West, he has traveled throughout the United States and abroad.
Now retired, he resides with his wife in Southern California where he devotes full-time to writing. Robert is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Masters Degree in Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles where he received the Samuel Goldwyn and Donald Davis Literary Awards.
An affinity for family and the astute observation of generational interaction pervade his novels. His works are literary and genre upmarket fiction that address the nature and importance of personal integrity.
Author Interview with Robert Tucker
1. What drew you to writing historical fiction?
As the grandson of immigrants who fled persecution in Germany and Austria-Hungary and came to America during the early 1900’s, the early history of our country and the rise of the middle-class have always held a fascination for me. The dramatic depiction of fictional characters placed in actual events sharply and realistically bring alive the harsh times and adversity of the multitude of people who sought freedom and a better way of life and demonstrate that only a little over one-hundred years have passed to bring us to where we are as a struggling divisive multi-ethnic society today.
As the grandson of immigrants who fled persecution in Germany and Austria-Hungary and came to America during the early 1900’s, the early history of our country and the rise of the middle-class have always held a fascination for me. The dramatic depiction of fictional characters placed in actual events sharply and realistically bring alive the harsh times and adversity of the multitude of people who sought freedom and a better way of life and demonstrate that only a little over one-hundred years have passed to bring us to where we are as a struggling divisive multi-ethnic society today.
2. How did you do research for your books?
The chronology and events of history have captured and held my interest for many reasons, among them being stories that entertain, educate, and inform. Learning about the lives of my immigrant grandparents coming to America from Czechoslovakia during the early 1900s and the lives of my parents during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s provided the initial motivation.
The bibliography at the end of The Revolutionist lists a number of secondary resources that provided in depth details about the period and social and political milieu of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Minnesota, and Chicago during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Among the most vivid and engaging research was the entertaining stories my grandparents and parents told me as a child about their lives.
In addition, I have either visited or lived in some of the locations described in the novels, including European countries. For example, I was born and raised in the Middle-Western heartland of Illinois and assimilated rural and urban values and traditions of that region of the country. I lived near Chicago for my first sixteen years and in Minnesota. As a teenager and Explorer Boy Scout, I also traveled through Wisconsin and in Ontario, Canada on camping and canoe trips and gained a love and appreciation for lakes, rivers, forests, and fields.
3. Where do you get inspiration for your stories?
Whether writing historical fiction or other genres, I’m drawn into the societies and cultures of a particular period that inspire the creation of characters who bring that era to life. Not only do I experience this dynamic in books, but in films, plays, dance, music, and other art forms.
4. What inspired you to write The Revolutionist and its sequel, Burton Blake?
My inspiration for these novels originated with the characters of Julie Josephson and her brother, Newt, and their friend, Aaron Peet, whose images were captured in a wood-framed photograph I saw of them while on a business trip in Ontario, Canada.
The photograph was taken during the summer of 1898 and hangs in the historical museum at St. Cloud, Minnesota. It shows Newt Josephson’s sister, Julie, his boyhood friend, Aaron Peet, and Newt standing among a posed group of loggers in front of the Frazier River Mill. The green tinged copper title plate at the bottom of the picture elicits a bemused smile --- Rivermen.
Because of the coveralls and wool shirts and work boots and caps they wore, an observer could not detect that Julie was a girl. They didn’t hire girls or women, not even to cook in the lumber camps. Logging was considered a man’s job. Julie pretending to be a boy presented more of a problem than keeping her hair cut short, her voice pitched low, walking square and never screaming when she was afraid or crying when she got hurt.
Recreating the lives of these main characters became the foundation of their story that expanded to myriad others in the context of historical events at the turn of the twentieth century. Burton Blake is a multi-generational continuation of the story from World War II to the present.
5. If you could put yourself as a character or characters in your books, who would they be?
Julie Josephson in The Revolutionist and Burton Blake in Burton Blake.
Both protagonists struggle against nearly insurmountable odds and social forces during different periods of American history spanning the 20th century. Both are revolutionists of their times.
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