About this Book: |
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Captain James Lang was a highly educated son of the southern aristocracy, and Mexican War veteran turned soldier of fortune. He has a clear-cut, well defined existence until an unusual assignment to southwest Iowa turned his martial life upside down. Captain Lang found himself embroiled in the clandestine, often violent, world of the Underground Railroad and the Kansas Border Wars.
This was an unfamiliar world of devout, but naïve abolitionists mingled with spies, liars, cowards, and killers. His task being to divine the good from the evil, the radical from the righteous.
Impartiality or complete avoidance of local politics would have been simple enough if not for his chance meeting of Jessanne Gates, wife of the local minister and head of the area’s abolitionist movement.
Lang, the man, was instantly enamored by the beautiful Jessanne, who reciprocated the emotion. Captain Lang, the soldier, is tormented by his engrained duty to his southern way of life, his own subjugation of a whole race of people, and the only woman he would ever love.
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About the Author: |
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Gary J. Pool was born in 1946 to a poor southwest Iowa farm family. His father was a World War II veteran, a man of few words; his mother was an insatiable reader and conversationalist.
Being raised on a dead-end dirt road near the Missouri River, Gary spent hours hunting and fishing and became an avid outdoorsman. Gary’s father raised his only son to survive being a soldier in a war that he somehow knew was coming. This training fell in line with Gary’s choice to serve in the US Army in Bomb Disposal. Vietnam provided the wealth of factual antidotes for his first book, Xuc May. His second book, The Captain and the Candles is a fictionalized account of a small religious abolitionist town that foolishly becomes involved in the Underground Railroad and the 1850’s Kansas Border Wars.
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Book Review: |
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The Captain and The Candles is a very captivating book that includes action, murder, secrecy and romance. Although the book is fictionalized Mr. Pool used his knowledge of the facts of the Underground Railroad to write this very intriguing story that will keep you reading for hours without putting the book down. His descriptive nature of writing not only holds your attention but also puts a vivid picture of the events in your mind. This is a book that everyone will love.
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