Goal of 60 Met and Happy New Year!

Old East (may not be the final name) Soon to be the next book of author Joel Tuggle

I had the unique opportunity to read the manuscript from Joel Tuggle (author of Church Retreat that I reviewed back in July). I do not know if the name of the book is going to be Old East or not but since it was the file name and I need to call it something, I will call it Old East for the sake of this review. I will post when the book does come out and what the title is so you can get your copy and believe me, you will want to get a copy. 

It starts off in 1983 one month before graduation when Mark Johnson goes to one of the campus libraries and finds the book of essays from Benjamin Franklin from the 1787 Constitutional Delegation in Philadelphia that was believed lost over a hundred years ago. A piece of paper falls out of the book that Mark keeps for himself and on it is written “Gold is buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Kinston. Grave marked Stinson. J. LeFors CSA April 1863.” Mark tells no one of this and takes off to Maplewood Cemetery with full intentions of digging up the grave to see if the gold is really there. Between all the excitement of the thought of gold and the exhaustion of no sleep and the trip combined with low blood sugar from not eating, after a few feet of digging Mark needs to rest and ends up falling asleep. While Mark is asleep he dreams about what happened and how that paper had come to be in that book. This is a jump into history back to the Civil War and how the gold was to fund the war efforts only it never made it there and how it was buried and the note written and placed in that book. 

I do not want to write too much about this manuscript as they can/do change before final publication and I don't want to give anything away here since I don't know what or how much the author will reveal once he publishes the book. 

The plot is excellent, the characters are well developed and the flow of the story is consistently good, always moving forward. It doesn't matter if you are a history buff or not, you will enjoy this book so keep your eyes out for more about this author and book.