From the furious mantrap called the Battle of Bunker Hill to a raging disaster at sea, THE BRIMSTONE PAPERS tell the first year of the Revolutionary War as no one has ever thought to do. The story, based on the peripatetic life of a real man, is as rooted in its time as it is relevant to ours.
THE BRIMSTONE PAPERS (The Life of Israel Potter)
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Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
David Chacko and Alexander Kulcsar have followed up their well-received novel Gone Over with The Brimstone Papers, a second story featuring the same character. This man, Israel Potter, was also the subject of a Herman Melville novel. Surprisingly, The Brimstone Papers, a continuation and prequel, is not inferior to the authors' first effort, or to Melville's novel.
The Brimstone Papers tells the story of Potter's early years and the events that precede his arrival in England as a prisoner. In doing so, the novel focuses on the first year of the Revolutionary War and the hectic action that takes place in New England from the spring to the deep winter of 1775. That includes the furore accompanying the Lexington Alarm--particularly uproarious in Potter's native Rhode Island--and two months later, the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill.
From the Author
We spent as much time researching this story as we did writing it. We're pretty sure the hard labor doesn't show, but the enthusiasm does. This is a great read meant to be savored without really stopping.
David Chacko and
Alexander Kulcsar
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David Chacko has written nineteen novels. Many are in the espionage and mystery genres with occasional outbreaks into common sense. He can usually be found in Istanbul or New York. The consistent factor here is that both places have good food, beautiful women, and memorable views of the sea.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brimstone Papers a Triumph,
This review is from: The Brimstone Papers (The Life of Israel Potter) (Paperback)
"The Brimstone Papers," a prequel to "Gone Over," is a rare historical novel. It excitingly dramatizes the life and adventures of an actual Revolutionary War figure, Israel Potter, while capturing the atmosphere and color of pre-war Colonial America, complete with thrilling battle sequences and unforgettable characters. The novel's unique and often hilarious use of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary gives the novel the sense that it was actually written in 1775. The language is almost Dickensian in its sound and feel. If the purpose of historical fiction is to bring characters, and the time in which they live, to vivid life for a reader in a way that scholarly history does not, then "The Brimstone Papers" is a triumph of its genre.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent Revolutionary-era historical novel,
By Al Past (Beeville, TX USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Brimstone Papers (The Life of Israel Potter) (Paperback)
The Brimstone Papers is a worthy successor (actually a prequel, in order of publication) to Gone Over, published in 2009. Taken together, the two books amount to a fictional narrative of the adult life of a real historical character of note during the American Revolution, Israel Potter. The Brimstone Papers deals with Potter's life as a young man as the Revolution lurches into motion. Gone Over opens with Potter as a captive of the British and his recruitment by them to spy on his countrymen. It is an extraordinary life, and Mssrs. Chacko and Kulcsar have rendered it in a highly readable and absorbing fashion.
Recapping the Wikipedia entry, "Israel Potter (1744-1826) was... born in Cranston, Rhode Island. He had been a veteran of the Battle of Bunker Hill, a sailor in the Revolutionary navy, a prisoner of the British, an escapee in England, a secret agent and courier in France, and a 45-year exile from his native land as a laborer, pauper, and peddler in London." Such a man is clearly a fine subject for fictional treatment, all the more so because most details of his life are largely unknown. The two books flesh out Potter's life in most convincing and stylish manner. Perhaps their finest accomplishment is conveying the sense of the times - grand times, we think today: revolution was in the air. Great deeds were being done, by our worship-worthy forefathers. But few people would have thought that at the time. The colonists would have felt terribly overmatched against the mighty British Empire, sandwiched between British Canada and the (mostly) British Caribbean, threatened by large, well-equipped armies (including German) conquering American cities at will. Spies and loyalists were everywhere. Everything was in doubt, living was hard, and fear and anxiety would have been the order of the day. Chacko and Kulcsar convey this ambience well, much better than conventional histories--but then ambience is one of the strengths of good historical fiction, or it should be. As The Brimstone Papers opens, Israel Potter is a young man who obtains some land at long odds and is beginning to work it and make a life for himself (after an unhappy episode as a sailor, not described in the book). Harshly raised by his grandfather and inclined to oppose British oppression by whatever means necessary (rendering him a lapsed Quaker), he is sent to report to a relative, a rich, domineering merchant opposed to independence in Providence, Rhode Island. The events which follow result in his joining the militia and seeing action at the battle of Bunker Hill, splendidly described and perhaps the most riveting section of the book. Gaining a measure of responsibility from his experiences, Potter joins the crew of a hastily prepared warship, badly outfitted under a captain of dubious effectiveness, and sails into a complete disaster. This is the point at which the companion volume, Gone Over, opens. The venality of war profiteers, the incompetence of authority, and the turning of the coats of those of feeble loyalty make today's diplomatic snarls seem tame, however similar. Even Israel Potter was not immune. If he is a hero (I wouldn't call him one), he is a hero with an asterisk by his name. Both The Brimstone Papers and Gone Over are first-rate. Recommended. Dr. Al Past is the author of the four Distant Cousin novels, a popular adventure/romance/sci-fi series, contributed the photographs for Barry Yelton's On Wings of Gentle Power, the author of a book of treble clef duets from Charles Colin, a reviewer for PODBRAM, and a member of the Independent Authors Guild. He lives on a ranch in south Texas.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tightly-woven, well-paced historical fiction,
By
This review is from: The Brimstone Papers (The Life of Israel Potter) (Paperback)
This prequel to Gone Over, their previous Israel Potter work, is a tightly-woven, well-paced fictional rendering of what history only provides by hints. If the first 30 pages are a little slow going, stick with it. You will understand why they chose to start the narrative that way as you get deeper into it. Many years of historical research and preparation went into creating this novel and it shows. The language, especially the dialogue, is authentic to the Revolutionary period and the characterizations of Potter and the people that make up his life kept me riveted. Particularly thrilling is a scene where Potter proves his mettle to a hostile crew of profiteers. Here is the excerpt from 202-203:
After the first minutes aloft, Israel knew he sould not survive long. The wind that was tremendous on deck, strong enough to blow a man down, grew tenfold without the baffles of the sails and bulkheads. He could see the harsh trace of it in the water, the ragged chop and the changes of direction, the rippling whitcaps, the waves booming off the bow, the jagged frozen spray. Those things that were often invisible were now like a map of his pain. It was said when a man died of the cold he felt little of his passing, but Israel wondered who had come back with that lying word. He felt no numbness in the wet slashing wind, no slow decline into sleep. All he knew were the degrees of freezing--the minute cuts of razor force in every wind-shift, the muscles of his face that could not be unclenched, the twitch of his spine that seemed to want to shatter skin and bone, the slow thickening of his blood. Two things worked for his survival. The fore-truck had been built up in Plymouth so the cylinder of wood like half a hogshead barrel came up past his waist, shielding his lower body from the worst of the wind and the limb-snapping lines and canvas; and on theh bow side was a rack holding a spyglass, a pair of woolen gloves, and a small flask of rum. Israel wore the gloves, drank the rum, ignored the glass, and hunched as deep as he could into the sharkskin coat given to him by Nancy Spooner. He knew if anything could save him it would be that good shagreen. There would be no mercy from the mate. The watch changed every two hours below, every hour aloft, and in foul weather that was usually halved again. But the first watch passed with no relief. And the second. When it was clear there would be a third, Israel faltered. He slapped himself in the face but felt nothing but a dull thud that was recognizable by its sound; he dropped his head, hard, onto the fore-truck, which worked for seconds; then he began to drift into a slow drizzling state of mind that was not sleep but was warm, that cradled him, as if he were adrift in the leaking longboat from the Sloop Elizabeth, waiting to die.
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