James M Vesely – författare

Sixteen heartwarming, often humorous stories that cover four decades of ritual, custom, and tradition at Morgan Park Military Academy, seen through the eyes of one legendary instructor Capt. Francis S. Gray. For more than forty years, his common sense and stubborn insistence on academic excellence helped generations of cadets through awkward adolescence and into young manhood.

Japheth Bunt, a veteran of that war, is a man who lives to hunt and drink at the expense of honest work. No ones ideal of a husband or a father.

Hannah Bunt, of pioneer stock, is the strong-willed woman who fell in love with him years before, and content with her hard, but simple life on Coon Creek.

Elias Bunt their son. An adventurous boy who watches in fear as his life and the lives of those he loves are threatened by a bitter family feud that rages in the woods and on the roads of Hancock County, Illinois.

And, as the 19th century rolls into the 20th, a grown Elias is torn between his love for two women, and his misplaced loyalty to the notorious outlaw, Charlie Birger as the Bunts are caught up in a struggle to survive the violence and bootleg whiskey war that sweeps across the Mississippi River Valley.

A story filled with drama and turmoil, love and hate, heartbreak and humor with a cast of unforgettable characters as vivid and colorfully drawn as the turbulent times that produced them.

The Novaks survive and grow through love and loss, peace and war, epidemic and Depression, in a wondrous new land far from home a young and raw America immersed in the restless throes of change.

JOURNEY is a great, new family saga of turmoil, heartbreak, and humor with characters as vivid and colorful as the rich American landscape of the last hundred years.

Seasons of Harvest begins a great, sweeping epic of the early Southwest. The story introduces young Neska, and the spirited captive girl, Walking Moon, as the ancient Anasazi begin the long trek from their distant cliff house dwellings to the timeless Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico.

Neska becomes a leader. As generations pass, the Pueblo people are forced to defend themselves against raiding Plains Indians, encroaching Navajo and Apache, as well as the merciless Comanche while across an ocean, a strange, new threat looms. In Spain, a dark, forbidden love forces young Primitivo Apodaca to leave his home and seek his fortune as a conquistador in the New World. Awed by the horses and fearsome weapons of the Spanish, Pueblo warriors soon meet Francisco Coronados army and the bloody, tragic results change the river world forever.

Years later, young Miguel Apodaca follows his grandfathers footsteps as a soldier in the army of Don Juan Oate, but is ultimately disillusioned and repelled by the cruelty of Spanish conquest. Miguel finally deserts, fleeing a charge of treason and the hangmans noose, to begin a new life in the vast New Mexico wilderness.

Shadows on the Land is the third and final volume of the Corrales Valley Trilogy. The story resumes near the turn of the twentieth century, and follows the final tragedy of the Bonneau brothers and the coming of age of Gaetano Perna.

After being wounded in the trenches of France, young James Parrish returns home to marry lovely Emily MacKenzie. They move a small herd onto Corrales land and put down roots as the first Anglos in the village. With the help of her husbands grizzled cowhands, Emily learns the ranching business.

In the 20s and 30s, bootlegging and racial hatred impact upon the people of the village. Little Rueben, the lame son of Amos Apodaca is helped by the infamous Al Capone, while Gaetano Pernas son, Santo, runs afoul of the ruthless Chicago gangster. The Parrish ranch is the scene of murderous vengeance as the Ku Klux Klan spread their message of hate and fear throughout the Southwest.

Finally, there is the shock of Pearl Harbor. Young friends Joe Apodaca and Holt Parrish find themselves swept up in the horror of the Bataan Death March, while Holts younger brother, Lee, pilots a B-25 over the jungles of Burma, and crippled Rueben is an awed eyewitness to the dawn of the nuclear age in the desert wastes of Alamagordo.

The author was born and raised in Chicago. In addition to writing and traveling, he is an avid fisherman, hunter, and scuba diver. He has published Seasons of Harvest, a three-volume historical novel, and is at work on a second novel titled Cumberland Road. This book is his first nonfiction work.