Illinois Authors

Agave Americana Books 2022

A clash of civilizations, two powerful leaders, and a dramatic outcome that ripples through generations.Following the French and Indian War, white settlers pour over the Appalachians and down the Ohio River. But native tribes of the Northwest Territory have long inhabited this land—and they are willing to fight to remain. Leading the Shawnee is Tecumseh—courageous, discerning, and capable of assembling fifty thousand warriors to rise together to chase the white settlers back east when he commands. How will warriors from Florida to Canada know when the command has come? For twenty years his answer has been the same: “I will stomp my foot.”Against Tecumseh stands an equally talented, implacable, and gifted opponent, William Henry Harrison. The decades-long struggle between cultures, and men, comes to a dramatic head at the Battle of Tippecanoe, with history-shaping consequences.A Panther Crosses Over is the first book of The American Trilogy series, three novels that reframe the epic legacy of the fight for the American Midwest.

Agave Americana Books 2021

Jack Kendrick is fired from his job as sales manager for a high-power commercial real estate agency because he will not compromise his ethics and agree to an illegal sale. He lands on his feet and is hired by another firm. One of the agents working under him is a rapacious and ambitious woman named Liz Peterson. She has no ethics and will stop at nothing to close a deal. She exploits the ambitions of a young trainee, forces him to have sex with a client, which drives him to suicide. Jack Kendrick, investigating the young man's death, uncovers the illegal aspects of Liz's dealing, and a showdown tests the morals and the strengths of all concerned.

Agave Americana Books 2023

At the dawn of the 20th century, Beardstown, Illinois, is a city of contradiction. A town of river rats, gamblers, and rail-yard workers, it’s also filled with the accoutrements and refinements that accompany wealth . . . whatever its provenance. In Beardstown, the God-fearing don’t just live side-by-side with the sinners—they often are the sinners.Throughout the first half of the century, the state’s attorney is always a McHugh, a Beardstown family that has spent generations fostering the town’s prosperity by keeping the balance between virtue and vice. For the McHughs, knowing when to look the other way is half the job. But when the young, Yale-educated Milt McHugh returns from WWII to take up his father’s position, he approaches the role with a very different sense of morality, as well as a desire to clean the town’s slate for good—public opinion be damned.Forty years later, Milt is faced with a town in decline and the prospective fraud trial of a gaggle of corrupt investors known as the “Beardstown Ladies.” As he looks back on his life, his work, and the town his courage and moral fiber has created, he wonders: Was the sacrifice of freedom at the altar of decency worth the price the town has paid?Following the people of Beardstown through a century of upheaval, renewal, and decay—and traveling from Prohibition-era Chicago to London and the Pacific during WWII to the soundstage of the Phil Donohue Show—American Pied Piper is the final chapter in a trilogy tracing the rise and fall of the American Midwest.

Agave Americana Books 2023

When Americans created civilization from wilderness, there were those who followed the rules and those who created their own—an enduring conflict between liberty and virtue that formed a new land.Five years have passed since the death of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. The native peoples of the Midwest have been defeated, and the fertile soil of Illinois is up for grabs by a steady stream of opportunistic dreamers. The ones who get there first will shape this new America as it suits them—or so they intend.When two young adventurers, Thomas Beard and Murray McConnel, find their way to Mascouten Bay in 1818, the land is full of promise. There, Beard envisions a town built on the bank of the Illinois River, a bustling place of commerce. With McConnel’s gift for political strategy, the two manipulate the land, and the laws, to work in their favor. This new town—Beardstown—will be above all a place of civilization and culture. But the untapped wealth of the region attracts more than just families. Fierce young people are out to make their fortunes in any way they see fit, and the frontier promises them the freedom to do so. As the town’s founders wrestle to manage the clash of virtue and liberty, they bear witness to a nation shaping itself, a nation whose powerful forward momentum might be impossible for them, or anyone else, to control.Beardstown boldly tracks the sweep of the nineteenth century across middle America and features an incredible cast of characters, from farmers, philosophers, soldiers, and gamblers to calculating entrepreneurs, charming and brilliant madams, and even a young captain-turned-lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. Beardstown is the second book of the American Trilogy series, three novels that reframe the epic legacy of the fight for the American Midwest.

Agave Americana Books 2021

A racially charged novel about authority, loyalty, and the cost of morality.Corporal William Buck is on leave in Memphis, visiting his mother, when Martin Luther King, Jr., is shot dead, and the city erupts in a race riot. Rather than leave his mother in the urban war zone, Corporal Buck chooses to become AWOL. When he eventually returns, he is willing to face discipline but refuses to tolerate the hateful taunts of a racist sergeant.A novel charged with emotion and moral tensions, Non-Semper Fidelis is about a Marine attempting to survive the military code of the United States Marine Corps, while preserving a mind and morality of his own.