Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Civil War

The 2023 Laramie Book Awards Short List for Americana Fiction
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).

Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.

These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from the 2023 Laramie Americana Long List to the 2023 Laramie Book Awards SHORT LIST. The Short Listers will compete for the Semi-Finalists positions. FINALISTS will be selected from the Semi-Finalists. The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 20th, 2024 in Bellingham, Wash. sponsored by the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

These titles are in the running for the SEMI-FINALISTS of the 2023 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction!

Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!
- Leah Angstman – The Only Way to Cheat a Hangman
- Heidi M. Thomas – Rescue Ranch Rising
- Barbara Salvatore – The Trail to Niobrara
- Barbara Toomer – Season of Our Reckoning
- Deborah Hufford – Blood to Rubies
- George T. Arnold – The Heart Beneath the Badge
- Kimberly Burns – The Redemption of Mattie Silks
- Leslie K Simmons – Red Clay, Running Waters
- E. Alan Fleischauer – Chip Heller Man of Valor
- Donna E. Lane – This Hallowed Ground
- Martha Engber – The Falcon, the Wolf, and the Hummingbird
- James Holland – Vigilante Love Song: Alice Roosevelt and The White House Gunfighters
- Myra Hargrave McIlvain – The Knotted Ring
- K.S. Jones – Tastefully Texas
- Venetia Hobson Lewis – Changing Woman
- T.K. Conklin – Promise of Spring
- Steven Mayfield – The Penny Mansions
- Joan Koster – That Dickinson Girl: A Novel of the Civil War
- Thomas Goodman – The Last Man: A Novel of the 1927 Santa Claus Bank Robbery
- J. Stanion – My Place Among Them
- Shanna Hatfield – Love on Target
- JR Holland – Alice Roosevelt and the White House Gunfighters
- John Hansen – Grays Lake
- Michael L. Ross – Across the Great Divide: Book 3 The Founding
- Julia Brewer Daily – The Fifth Daughter of Thorn Ranch
- David Calloway – If Someday Comes
- K. S. Jones – Change of Fortune
- Elizabeth Woolsey – The Travels of Dr. Rebecca Harper A Matter of Time
- T. M. Brown – The Last Laird of Sapelo
- Sophia Alexander – Homespun
- Daniel Greene – Northern Dawn (Northern Wolf Series Book 4)
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.

PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!

This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the FB post. However, for FB to allow us to tag an author, that author must LIKE our page and Follow Chanticleer Reviews.

Please click here to visit our page to LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

Additionally, we also post on Twitter. Chanticleer Twitter’s handle is @ChantiReviews

Or click here to go directly to Chanticleer’s Twitter feed.

Good luck to all as your works move on the next rounds of judging.

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2022 LARAMIE Awards is:

Guarded Hearts

by T.K. Conklin

Click here to see the 2022 Laramie Book Award Winners for Americana Fiction.

Please click here for more information.

For our other Historical Fiction Awards, please see the following:
Winners will be announced at the 2023 CIBA Awards Ceremony that is sponsored by the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

CAC24 –April 18-21, 2024! Register Today!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 11th annual conference and discover why!
November 16, 2023
The 2023 Laramie Book Awards Long List for Americana Fiction
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).

Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.

These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from all 2023 Laramie Americana entries to the 2023 Laramie Book Awards LONG LIST. Entries below are now in competition for the 2023 Laramie Short List. The Short Listers will compete for the Semi-Finalists positions. FINALISTS will be selected from the Semi-Finalists. The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 20th, 2024 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Wash. sponsored by the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

These titles are in the running for the SHORT LIST of the 2023 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction!

Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!
- Leah Angstman – The Only Way to Cheat a Hangman
- Heidi M. Thomas – Rescue Ranch Rising
- Barbara Salvatore – The Trail to Niobrara
- Barbara Toomer – Season of Our Reckoning
- Deborah Hufford – Blood to Rubies
- George T. Arnold – The Heart Beneath the Badge
- Kimberly Burns – The Redemption of Mattie Silks
- Leslie K Simmons – Red Clay, Running Waters
- E. Alan Fleischauer – Chip Heller Man of Valor
- Loretta Miles Tollefson – There Will Be Consequences
- Donna E. Lane – This Hallowed Ground
- Susan Rounds – The Winds of Autumn: A Marquette Legacy Epic Romance
- Martha Engber – The Falcon, the Wolf, and the Hummingbird
- James Holland – Vigilante Love Song: Alice Roosevelt and The White House Gunfighters
- Leslie K Simmons – Red Clay, Running Waters
- Myra Hargrave McIlvain – The Knotted Ring
- K.S. JONES – Tastefully Texas
- Venetia Hobson Lewis – Changing Woman
- T.K. Conklin – Promise of Spring
- Steven Mayfield – The Penny Mansions
- Joan Koster – That Dickinson Girl: A Novel of the Civil War
- Thomas Goodman – The Last Man: A Novel of the 1927 Santa Claus Bank Robbery
- J. Stanion – My Place Among Them
- Shanna Hatfield – Love on Target
- JR Holland – Alice Roosevelt and the White House Gunfighters
- John Hansen – Grays Lake
- John W. Jarrett – The Dark Prairie
- Michael L. Ross – Across the Great Divide: Book 3 The Founding
- Julia Brewer Daily – The Fifth Daughter of Thorn Ranch
- David Calloway – If Someday Comes
- K. S. JONES – Change of Fortune
- Elizabeth Woolsey – The Travels of Dr. Rebecca Harper A Matter of Time
- Lloyd Mullins – A Rare and Dangerous Beast
- T. M. Brown – The Last Laird of Sapelo
- Sophia Alexander – Homespun
- Daniel Greene – Northern Dawn (Northern Wolf Series Book 4)
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.

PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!

This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the FB post. However, for FB to allow us to tag an author, that author must LIKE our page and Follow Chanticleer Reviews.

Please click here to visit our page to LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

Additionally, we also post on Twitter. Chanticleer Twitter’s handle is @ChantiReviews

Or click here to go directly to Chanticleer’s Twitter feed.

Good luck to all as your works move on the next rounds of judging.

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2022 LARAMIE Awards is:

Guarded Hearts

by T.K. Conklin

Click here to see the 2022 Laramie Book Award Winners for Americana Fiction.

The 2024 Laramie Awards are now open! Click here for more information!

For our other Historical Fiction Awards, please see the following:
Winners will be announced at the 2023 CIBA Awards Ceremony that is sponsored by the 2024 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

CAC24 –April 18-21, 2024! Register Today!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 11th annual conference and discover why!
October 9, 2023
The 2023 Laramie Awards Hall of Fame

The Laramie Awards are calling

Submit your Americana, Western or Civil War Novels to the CIBAs!

***Tell your story today***

You have until September 30th to share your Story with us and enter the 2023 CIBAs!

Charles M. Russell painted the cowboy seen on Chanticleer’s very own Laramie contest badge. It is one of many such paintings he did that encompassed the Old American Wild West. An advocate for the Native Americans, Charles M. Russell also helped establish a reservation in Montana for the Chippewa people.

Lets take a look at the Grand Prize Winners of the Laramie Awards!

Tom Sawyer Returns
By E.E. Burke
Laramie Grand Prize

Tom Sawyer Returns is the second book in The New Adventures series by author E.E. Burke.

Readers join a now grown up and far more independent Becky Thatcher as she maneuvers her complicated life in Civil War era Mississippi. Tom has long since left, and Becky is engaged to Union Captain Alfred Temple, who offers her all the safety and security she needs in such uncertain times. But does she love him? Actually love him?

Becky soon discovers that her heart may have other plans.

Read More Here

Trouble The Water
By Rebecca Dwight Bruff
Overall Grand Prize Winner

Robert Smalls’ life should have been one for the history books.

Smalls was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839. When the first shots of the Civil War were fired upon Fort Sumter, Smalls was an experienced helmsman aboard a small cargo ship plying the coastal waters of South Carolina and the neighboring states. Once the war broke out, he found himself working to support a cause that kept him, his wife, and their children locked in chattel slavery.

But in a daring escapade that fell somewhere between a raid and a rescue, Smalls planned, with the help of his fellow crew members (also slaves) aboard the CSS Planter, to abscond with the ship, its cargo of munitions taken from Fort Sumter, and bring their families. The plan was to sail the ship as though its white officers were still on board, pretending to be carrying out their orders—at least until the ship was out of the reach of Fort Sumter’s guns.

Read More Here

Seven Aprils
By Eileen Charbonneau
Laramie Grand Prize

Disguised gender identities, warfare, and thwarted romance all play a role in this many-layered novel, Seven Aprils, by award-winning fiction author Eileen Charbonneau.

When Tess Barton, a hardscrabble farm girl, saves the life of a man attacked by a panther, she and he little realize how fated this encounter will prove. Ryder Cole, the man she saved, moves on, pursuing a medical career just as the United States seems destined for war. Intrepid Tess will move on, too, when she learns that her widower father sells her in matrimony to an old, brutish shopkeeper. A wise crone cuts Tess’s hair and garbs her in men’s attire. Reborn as Tom Boyde, who will soon, strangely, meet up with Ryder and become one of his “men,” conscripted into Lincoln’s armies. Tess/Tom shows promise as a medical assistant with some undeniable cooking skills, and together with two other conscripts, they make the team in the Union’s army hospital units.

Read More Here

Blood Moon A Captives Tale
By Ruth Hull Chatlien
Laramie Grand Prize

Ruth Hull Chatlien’s historical novel Blood Moon: A Captive’s Tale shines a light on two worlds trying to coexist in the 1860s Minnesota, that of Westward Expansion and white settlers, and that of the complex network of Sioux tribes dealing with starvation and disease. We follow her protagonist, Mrs. Sarah Wakefield, as she is thrust unwillingly into the midst of the Indian Wars.

Based loosely on the life of real captive, Sarah Wakefield, Chatlien explores both sides of this conflict, through the eyes of our terrified hero, who does what she must to save her life and the lives of her two small children. The first-person narrative in present tense places us in the thick of Wakefield’s narrow escapes, and the presence of the constant threats to her and her children.

Read More Here

Reviews for the 2022 Laramie Awards are to come, but you can see the full list of winners here!

Now that you’re set on your next reads, what are you waiting for? The only way to join this amazing list of Laramie Winners is to submit today!

Those who submit and advance will have the chance to win the Overall Grand Prize of the CIBAs and $1000!

Are you a Chanticleer Author who has some good news to share? Let us know! We’re always looking for a reason to crow about Chanticleerians! Reach out with your news to info@ChantiReviews.com

September 20, 2023
THE LAST LAIRD of SAPELO by T. M. Brown – Biographical Fiction, U.S. Civil War, Military History

The Last Laird of Sapelo, by T. M. Brown, is the story of one man’s tragic death in pursuit of justice, as his way of life, too, dies in the flames of a war that he had tried his damnedest to avert.

Sapelo is one of the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia. As this story opens, the War Between the States has just begun, and the Confederacy plans to use those islands as a bulwark against the Union gunboats that assuredly will extend their blockade of Savannah all the way down the coast. If the blockade succeeds, then the South’s cotton, the fuel of its economic engine, will languish in Southern warehouses instead of sailing to buyers and allies across the sea.

Colonel Randolph Spalding, the last laird of the title, committed to the war despite arguing vehemently against it. Now an officer in charge of building a garrison on his own land, he’s caught between military duty, and personal responsibility.

As the Laird of Sapelo, Spalding is duty-bound to protect his family and his property, including more than three hundred enslaved people. .

The Spaldings consider themselves ‘enlightened’ slaveholders, giving their slaves more time and ‘freedom’ to work for themselves and have leisure, as well as sturdy houses and decent food. Their neighbors call them fools. The Confederate soldiers see the slaves as their rightful prey.

His military duty is to keep those soldiers in line. His personal duty is to keep his people safe. When those lines get crossed, he moves Heaven and Earth to make it right. Even if those lengths will cost him his own life.

This fictionalized biography illuminates a little-known, but pivotal, part of the U.S. Civil War: the defense of the Confederate coastline as it happened on the ground, in tiny communities.

Spalding draws readers into his own story, telling it through letters and diary entries over the first year of that terrible war. His first-person perspective on those early months, at a point when hopes were high but organization was lacking, foretells the inevitable cost of this fight. The Civil War will exact a bloody cost no matter who triumphs on the battlefield.

Despite the deplorable cause for which he fights, Spalding’s internal conflicts, filled with intense emotion, make him a riveting character. He faces the scant triumphs and ultimate tragedies of a man who fights to preserve his world, only for it to disintegrate in his grasp.

The Last Laird of Sapelo will fascinate readers interested in the unsung facets of the U.S. Civil War, those looking for a nuanced approach to the origins of the conflict, and anyone interested in the details of military organization – or lack thereof – in 19th-century warfare.

The Last Laird of Sapelo comes out August 15, 2023, and is available for pre-order now wherever books are sold!

July 21, 2023
The 2022 Laramie Book Awards Finalists for Americana Fiction
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).

Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.

These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from all 2022 Laramie Americana Semi-Finalists to the 2022 Laramie Book Awards FINALISTS. The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 29th, 2023 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Wash. sponsored by the 2022 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

These titles are in the running for the FIRST PLACE WINNERS of the 2022 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction!

Join us in cheering on the following Finalist authors and their works!
- Pamela Nowak – Necessary Deceptions: The Women of Wyatt Earp
- Shanna Hatfield – Distracting the Deputy
- Bruce Gardner – Seeing Glory: A Novel of Family Strife, Faith, and the American Civil War
- E. Alan Fleischauer – JTs World
- Susan Higginbotham – John Brown’s Women: A Novel
- Debra Whiting Alexander – A River for Gemma
- Maggie St. Claire – Into the Wind
- T.K. Conklin – Guarded Hearts
- Ed Davis – The Last Professional
- E. Alan Fleischauer – How the West Was Won then Lost… Decimation
- Sophia Alexander – Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel
- Gail Hertzog – Crossing the Ford
- Dena Smallwood – Syrie
- Shanna Hatfield – Holiday Hope
- Eileen Charbonneau – Ursula’s Inheritance
- Daniel Greene – Northern Blood (Northern Wolf Series Book 3)
PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!

This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the FB post. However, for FB to allow us to tag an author, that author must LIKE our page and Follow Chanticleer Reviews.

Please click here to visit our pageto LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

Additionally, we also post on Twitter. Chanticleer Twitter’s handle is @ChantiReviews

Or click hereto go directly to Chanticleer’s Twitter feed.

Good luck to all as your works move on the next rounds of judging.

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2021 LARAMIE Awards is Tom Sawyer Returns by E.E. Burke

Click here to see the 2021 Laramie Book Award Winners for Americana Fiction.

We are now accepting submissions for the 2023 Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction.

Please click here for more information.

For our other Historical Fiction Awards, please see the following:
Winners will be announced at the 2022 CIBA Awards Ceremony, sponsored by the 2023 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

CAC23 – Turn it up to 11! April 27-30, 2023! Register Today!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 11th annual conference and discover why!

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions, concerns, or suggestions at info@ChantiReviews.com.
February 16, 2023
The 2022 Laramie Book Awards Semi-Finalists for Americana Fiction
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).

Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.

These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from all 2022 Laramie Americana Short List to the 2022 Laramie Book Awards SEMI-FINALISTS. FINALISTS will be selected from the Semi-Finalists. The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 29th, 2023 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Wash. sponsored by the 2022 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

These titles are in the running for the FINALISTS of the 2022 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction!

Join us in cheering on the following Semi-Finalist authors and their works!
- Pamela Nowak – Necessary Deceptions: The Women of Wyatt Earp
- Shanna Hatfield – Distracting the Deputy
- Bruce Gardner – Seeing Glory: A Novel of Family Strife, Faith, and the American Civil War
- E. Alan Fleischauer – JTs World
- Susan Higginbotham – John Brown’s Women: A Novel
- Debra Whiting Alexander – A River for Gemma
- T.K. Conklin – Guarded Hearts
- Larry Boucher – The Scout
- Ed Davis – The Last Professional
- E. Alan Fleischauer – How the West Was Won then Lost …. Decimation
- Sophia Alexander – Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel
- Gail Hertzog – Crossing the Ford
- Dena Smallwood – Syrie
- Shanna Hatfield – Holiday Hope
- Eileen Charbonneau – Ursula’s Inheritance
- Harriet Cannon – Exiled South
- Margaret Arross – El Viento
- Daniel Greene – Northern Blood (Northern Wolf Series Book 3)
PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!

This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the FB post. However, for FB to allow us to tag an author, that author must LIKE our page and Follow Chanticleer Reviews.

Please click here to visit our pageto LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

Additionally, we also post on Twitter. Chanticleer Twitter’s handle is @ChantiReviews

Or click hereto go directly to Chanticleer’s Twitter feed.

Good luck to all as your works move on the next rounds of judging.

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2021 LARAMIE Awards is Tom Sawyer Returns by E.E. Burke

Click here to see the 2021 Laramie Book Award Winners for Americana Fiction.

We are now accepting submissions for the 2023 Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction.

Please click here for more information.

For our other Historical Fiction Awards, please see the following:
Winners will be announced at the 2022 CIBA Awards Ceremony, sponsored by the 2023 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

CAC23 – Turn it up to 11! April 27-30, 2023! Register Today!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 11th annual conference and discover why!

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions, concerns, or suggestions at info@ChantiReviews.com.
January 18, 2023
The 2022 Laramie Book Awards Short List for Americana Fiction
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).

Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.

These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from all 2022 Laramie Americana Long List to the 2022 Laramie Book Awards SHORT LIST. The Short Listers will compete for the Semi-Finalists positions. FINALISTS will be selected from the Semi-Finalists. The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 29th, 2023 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Wash. sponsored by the 2022 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

These titles are in the running for the SEMI-FINALISTS of the 2022 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction!

Join us in cheering on the following Short List authors and their works!
- Jerry E. Bustin – Outlaws, Renegades, and Prickly Pear Jam
- Pamela Nowak – Necessary Deceptions: The Women of Wyatt Earp
- Shanna Hatfield – Distracting the Deputy
- Bruce Gardner – Seeing Glory: A Novel of Family Strife, Faith, and the American Civil War
- E. Alan Fleischauer – JTs World
- Susan Higginbotham – John Brown’s Women: A Novel
- Debra Whiting Alexander – A River for Gemma
- T.K. Conklin – Guarded Hearts
- Larry Boucher – Ferris Station
- Larry Boucher – The Scout
- Ed Davis – The Last Professional
- E. Alan Fleischauer – How the West Was Won then Lost …. Decimation
- Sophia Alexander – Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel
- Gail Hertzog – Crossing the Ford
- Dena Smallwood – Syrie
- Betty Willis – Texas Quest
- Shanna Hatfield – Holiday Hope
- Susanna Lane – Imperfect Promise
- Eileen Charbonneau – Ursula’s Inheritance
- Harriet Cannon – Exiled South
- Margaret Arross – El Viento
- Daniel Greene – Northern Blood (Northern Wolf Series Book 3)
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.

PROMOTING OUR AUTHORS!

This post has been posted on the Chanticleer Facebook Page. We try to tag all authors listed here in the FB post. However, for FB to allow us to tag an author, that author must LIKE our page and Follow Chanticleer Reviews.

Please click here to visit our page to LIKE, COMMENT, and SHARE on Facebook.

Additionally, we also post on Twitter. Chanticleer Twitter’s handle is @ChantiReviews

Or click here to go directly to Chanticleer’s Twitter feed.

Good luck to all as your works move on the next rounds of judging.

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2021 LARAMIE Awards is Tom Sawyer Returns by E.E. Burke

Click here to see the 2021 Laramie Book Award Winners for Americana Fiction.

We are now accepting submissions for the 2023 Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction.

Please click here for more information.

For our other Historical Fiction Awards, please see the following:
Winners will be announced at the 2022 CIBA Awards Ceremony that is sponsored by the 2023 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

CAC23 – Turn it up to 11! April 27-30, 2023! Register Today!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 11th annual conference and discover why!

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions, concerns, or suggestions at info@ChantiReviews.com.
December 29, 2022
SEEING GLORY: A Novel of Family Strife, Faith & the American Civil War by Bruce Gardner- Christian Historical Fiction, Civil War, American Slavery

Seeing Glory by Bruce Gardner is a sweeping, thought-provoking Christian historical novel of the American Civil War. The novel portrays the critical roles of family ties and religious faith in shaping personal attitudes and actions towards the horrors of slavery and the war itself.

Spanning the era from the famous abolitionist John Brown’s Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856 through the end of the war nine years later, Seeing Glory focuses on the gut-wrenching conflicts over slavery and the southern way of life faced by David, Emma, and Catherine Hodge, fictional siblings, raised on a wealthy plantation in Virginia.

David returns home from a prestigious northern college filled with radical new perspectives. He challenges his father’s and his southern church’s assurances that the Bible says slavery is approved by God. When David calls out the truth as he now sees it, he ignites a firestorm that tears him away from his family at the beginning of the Civil War, sparking huge changes in their individual destinies. Soon after meeting Abel Bowman—an ardent abolitionist and follower of John Brown—David moves north to Ohio and becomes an embedded war reporter with Abel’s Union army regiment. Mutual zeal for the abolitionist cause abounds, but will it help or hinder the two men’s endurance of horrific battlefield violence and scandalous personal accusation?

Devastated by David’s departure from the plantation, his younger sister Emma is torn between the realities of slavery and her Christian faith. Unable to bear the cruelty that she sees her family’s slaves being subjected to, Emma flees north with her maidservant Sallie, one seeking freedom, the other seeking purpose.

Meanwhile, the elder Hodge daughter, Catherine, strives to be the perfect southern plantation mistress after her mother’s death. After marrying a Confederate officer, she is forced to manage both her ailing father’s and her 0wn plantation once her husband is off to war. The pressure of her siblings’ abandonment weighs on her as the war creeps closer, threatening to destroy everything she’s worked for.

Christian beliefs were a big part of the historical abolitionist movement. In Seeing Glory, each of the Hodge siblings and Abel Bowman face their own personal issues of faith, privilege, and forgiveness. It is through the lens of faith that these engaging characters discover their unique paths for surviving the war and supporting the abolition of slavery in the United States. On their journeys, they become involved in many historical events, interacting with famous people like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Angelina Grimké—a former plantation daughter from South Carolina who eventually became a nationally known abolitionist, journalist, teacher, and women’s rights advocate.

Although Seeing Glory falls within the Christian Historical fiction genre, Gardner doesn’t shy away from describing how the Bible was too often used by southern politicians, pastors, and churches to justify slavery—but on the other hand how ardent commitment to a “glorious cause” like abolition could at times be taken too far. Likewise, Gardner doesn’t downplay the brutality of slavery nor the destruction and devastation of the Civil War, though his novel is not excessively gruesome or overly explicit in its descriptions.

Fans of historical fiction will appreciate the compelling mix of fictional and historical characters woven through the emotion-packed saga of Seeing Glory, eager to discover what will happen next. Highly recommended!

October 10, 2022
The 2022 Laramie Book Awards Long List for Americana Fiction – a division of the 2022 CIBAs
The Laramie Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the Americana and Westerns fiction genre. The Laramie Book Awards is a division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards (The CIBAs).

Chanticleer Book Reviews is looking for the best books featuring Americana themes, First Nation stories, early North American History, cowboys & cowgirls in the Wild West, pioneering, and Civil War, and we will put them to the test and choose the best among them.

These titles have moved forward in the judging rounds from all 2022 Laramie Americana entries to the 2022 Laramie Book Awards LONG LIST. Entries below are now in competition for the 2022 Laramie Short List. The Short Listers will compete for the Semi-Finalists positions. FINALISTS will be selected from the Semi-Finalists. The First Place Category Winners, along with the CIBA Division Grand Prize winners, will be selected from the 25 CIBA divisions’ Finalists.

We will announce the 1st Place Category winners and Grand Prize Division Winners at the CIBAs Banquet and Ceremony on Saturday, April 29th, 2023 at the luxurious Hotel Bellwether in Bellingham, Wash. sponsored by the 2023 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

These titles are in the running for the SHORT LIST of the 2022 Laramie Book Awards novel competition for Americana Fiction!

Join us in cheering on the following authors and their works!
- Jerry E. Bustin – Outlaws, Renegades, and Prickly Pear Jam
- Pamela Nowak – Necessary Deceptions: The Women of Wyatt Earp
- Shanna Hatfield – Distracting the Deputy
- James W McDonopugh – A Distant Ridge
- Bruce Gardner – Seeing Glory: A Novel of Family Strife, Faith, and the American Civil War
- David Nix – Dead Man’s Hand
- E. Alan Fleischauer – JTs World
- Susan Higginbotham – John Brown’s Women: A Novel
- Debra Whiting Alexander – A River for Gemma
- T.K. Conklin – Guarded Hearts
- Larry Boucher – Ferris Station
- Larry Boucher – The Scout
- Ed Davis – The Last Professional
- E. Alan Fleischauer – How the West Was Won then Lost …. Decimation
- M.J. Hayes – Son of the Mountain
- Sophia Alexander – Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel
- Gail Hertzog – Crossing the Ford
- Dena Smallwood – Syrie
- Betty Willis – Texas Quest
- Shanna Hatfield – Holiday Hope
- Susanna Lane – Imperfect Promise
- Eileen Charbonneau – Ursula’s Inheritance
- Harriet Cannon – Exiled South
- Margaret Arross – The Priest and the Charlatan
- Margaret Arross – El Viento
- Daniel Greene – Northern Blood (Northern Wolf Series Book 3)
Good luck to all as your works move on to the next rounds of judging.

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Good luck to all as your works move on the next rounds of judging.

The Grand Prize Winner for the CIBA 2021 LARAMIE Awards is Tom Sawyer Returns by E.E. Burke

Click here to see the 2021 Laramie Book Award Winners for Americana Fiction.

We are now accepting submissions for the 2023 Laramie Book Awards for Americana Fiction.

Please click here for more information.

For our other Historical Fiction Awards, please see the following:
Winners will be announced at the 2022 CIBA Awards Ceremony that is sponsored by the 2023 Chanticleer Authors Conference.

CAC23 – Turn it up to 11! April 27-30, 2023! Register Today!

Seating is Limited. The esteemed WRITER Magazine (founded in 1887) has repeatedly recognized the Chanticleer Authors Conference as one of the best conferences to attend and participate in for North America.

Join us for our 11th annual conference and discover why!

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions, concerns, or suggestions at info@ChantiReviews.com.
October 5, 2022
TROUBLE the WATER by Rebecca Dwight Bruff – Black & African American Historical Fiction, Biographical Fiction,

Robert Smalls’ life should have been one for the history books.

Smalls was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839. When the first shots of the Civil War were fired upon Fort Sumter, Smalls was an experienced helmsman aboard a small cargo ship plying the coastal waters of South Carolina and the neighboring states. Once the war broke out, he found himself working to support a cause that kept him, his wife, and their children locked in chattel slavery.

But in a daring escapade that fell somewhere between a raid and a rescue, Smalls planned, with the help of his fellow crew members (also slaves) aboard the CSS Planter, to abscond with the ship, its cargo of munitions taken from Fort Sumter, and bring their families. The plan was to sail the ship as though its white officers were still on board, pretending to be carrying out their orders—at least until the ship was out of the reach of Fort Sumter’s guns.

If they failed to fool the Confederate batteries as they passed by in the night, the crew planned to set fire to the munitions in the hold rather than return to slavery. If they didn’t manage to strike down the Rebel colors and raise a white flag of surrender before they reached the Union blockade of the harbor, they’d be killed.

But no price was too high to pay for the hope of freedom.

This is the story of Smalls’ life from his childhood enslaved to Henry McKee through his hiring out in Charleston to his well-planned, well-executed and incredibly lucky escape, told in this fictionalized autobiography as if seen through the eyes of Robert Smalls himself.

The reader is inside the protagonist’s own thoughts and feelings as he grows from a childhood of slavery under the watchful eyes of his mother to learn at a very young age that the world in which he lives is designed to keep him in a cage. The unfairness of his world is in the very air that everyone around him breathes. To the point where those who benefit from that unfairness don’t even recognize that they are perpetuating the problem—no matter how good or how righteous or God-fearing they believe they are.

The lessons are hammered home as Smalls grows up to be a man who can never chart the course of his own destiny or make his own decisions—until he takes that destiny in his own hands at the wheel of that ship.

Smalls’ well-planned escape is the pivotal point of this true story. That desperate night makes for gripping, edge-of-the-seat reading as the small ship and its anxious crew, along with their praying families, ride the edge between hope and terror for a chance at freedom—no matter the cost.

But the heart and soul of the story are in the hero’s journey from a childhood as he grasped the cruel institution of slavery through growing consciousness of his precarious place in a world set against him. It’s not just that the reader is able to walk with him, but in this first person perspective his thoughts are laid bare and the reader can feel him reach for his own truth – and his own answers. Rebecca Dwight Bruff wrote a timely and brilliant debut novel that captures the lion-hearted Congressman Robert Smalls who continued to push boundaries for the political rights of African Americans.

Trouble the Water is an inspiring story of courage and grace under fire in its many forms. It rings with a voice of heroism along with thoughtfulness and sincerity. Stories matter.

Trouble the Water won the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards Overall Grand Prize for 2020.

May 13, 2022