BOOKS
Travelers of the Gray Dawn Paul Grimshaw (Chart House Publishing)
I read anything (ex-
cept your "romance novel") If I haven't read a book or two this week, I'm working too much. With that on my reader's resume, I
feel qualified to tell you that Paul Grimshaw's Travelers of the Gray Dawn is one of the most entertaining and engrossing books I've read in many years. I pulled it out of the stacks of books sent to my friend Michael Buffalo for review, and was sucked in immediately by the synopsis. As a Yankee living in the south now, I wanted to know the answer to the question - what if the South had won that war? - The Civil War, the War of Northern Aggression, "The Waah." What a treat! I fell through a wormhole
along with three Civil War re-enactors into the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and watched them accidentally interrupt an event that kept the South from winning. Actually, I had to stop reading and Google it to see if I had missed something in history class (wouldn't be a surprise) or if my Yankee school teachers had kept something from me in their lesson plans. So far as I can tell, Paul Grimshaw has just made his work of fiction so believable it's simply enough to make me question whether or not we missed that little piece of history. The South could have won the Civil War, if not for a tiny interruption. History, a touch of sci-fi - that wormhole,
quantum physics, the possibility of time travel & alternate universes are explained at a
level even I understood. A really cute twist on the love story (no, not "romance"- but kind of) and we even get a touch of a plot to over- throw this very comfortable government. As in many stories before, we already know that time travel can really mess up the course of history. And it does. North and South are two countries. Civil
rights... let's say Martin Luther King probably didn't "happen." Neighbors and family these three guys knew in their version of 2013 aren't quite the same as in this other world. The Mason Dixon Line is a real live border you need a passport to cross. I won't even start on the Underground Railroad. Hitler ruled Europe for too many years. I want a Marathon - the car built in Nashville that you can still afford to own because gasoline is cheap and readily available. Imagine this. What if you could travel back
and forth from our world to that world any- time you wanted to? Would you be the D.J. who introduced the alternate universe to "Sweet Home Alabama," or would you do a little geological prospecting for a couple bucks because you know something nobody in this other world does? Cell phones weren't thought of, yet. We have people acting as hu- mans do, on both personal motivations and the higher principles of deeply held values - good, bad and -okay, there’s nobody really too very ugly. Grimshaw weaves all of this into a really
easy read with incredibly well developed, col- orful characters. This book grabbed me from the beginning. A really fun and brilliant book. This read is time well spent - it won't take long. You won't put it down once you start.
- Colleen Knights
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