Author Spotlight - Bob Rogers
The MEL Community is fortunate to have many talented writers in our midst. This month, we turn our attention to Bob Rogers, a resident and author of historical fiction.
Bob Rogers is a veteran of the Vietnam War, where he served as a captain and combat leader, and a graduate of South Carolina State University. During and after a 33-year career at IBM, he created and taught free computer classes for under-employed youth in Norfolk, Virginia and senior citizens caught on the wrong side of the digital divide in Charlotte, North Carolina. He studied creative writing at the University of Maryland.
He started his writing career in historical fiction in 2009 with Hitting Life’s Curveballs, the story of a couple caught in the snare of World War II. Along their journey, they meet friends who sacrificed for them and others who would rather see them dead. Their struggle begins in the Central Piedmont of North Carolina and passes through Massachusetts, Virginia, and Indiana before ending in Italy's Tuscany.
Will, a lumberjack and amateur baseball player, falls in love with Dena, a beautiful and head-strong co-ed. While a world war rages, their dreams are threatened, first by classism when Will is declared "not good enough" to be a suitor for Dena's hand. Meanwhile, a group of powerful businessmen have designs to exploit his extraordinary baseball skills for their financial gain until the Ku Klux Klan intervenes. Will finds refuge in the US Army's 366th Infantry Regiment and the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division fighting Hitler's Wehrmacht in Italy. During Tuscany's harsh winter in the middle of a war, can Will find his path to the life he and Dena dreamed?
Bob has written a half-dozen books since this debut novel, all “based on a true story”. Among them are the antebellum deep-South novels, Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See and – perhaps his most popular work – 2014’s The Laced Chameleon.
In Two Rivers, we follow parallel courtships: enslaved widow Ella wooing 84-year-old widower Posey, and Tiffany Plantation manager James’ pursuit of Jacqueline, daughter of a bank president, revealing the side-by-side lifestyles of enslavers and the enslaved.
By 1854, the Tiffany family had enslaved over 300 Africans for more than a century on the 1,100-acre slave labor camp that they called the Tiffany Plantation. The Tiffanys were the largest rice producer in South Carolina’s Colleton District. While the toil of enslaved Africans earned untold riches for the Tiffanys, the Africans endured violence inflicted to force increased rice production and profits followed by the indignity of the bodies of loved ones being stolen from their graves and delivered to a medical school. We follow Posey’s campaign to halt this indignity on his people, and James’ attempts to finally become a member of the ruling class he so strongly covets.
Rich with history and a cast of unforgettable characters, Two Rivers is a sweeping saga of two peoples—European immigrants and African abductees. Together, they experience courtships, infanticide, homicide, rape, rebellions, revenge, sabotage, storms, high-stakes gambling, grave-robbing, counterfeiting, slave mortgage-backed securities, and more.
The Laced Chameleon is a striking novel that looks beyond race and takes readers into women’s caste and class struggles in the antebellum South.
New Orleans, April 1862. Red buckeye and gladiolus blossoms adorn the city. Hope has come with spring, though the Great American Civil War is entering its second year. But for Francesca Dumas, the murder of her “contract husband” has changed her future from bright to bleak. As with her mother and friends, a marriage of any kind was the only way a woman could live a life free from poverty.
With the recent arrival of rumors that the war will soon come to New Orleans, Francesca—and her friends and neighbors—must make the painful small choices available to women: find another man or compete for a handful of “female occupations.” Or she could decide to take on a role that was reserved for men—instead of following a friend and passing for white.
Superimposed on Francesca’s story are greed and murders committed by men seeking power and wealth—all while the deeply divided United States is in civil strife and its survival as a single nation is in doubt. Undaunted by a depleted police force because of war, Francesca undertakes finding and bringing to justice her husband’s assassin. She gets advice and help in her crusade from historic people of New Orleans, including humanitarian Venerable Henriette Delille, actress Sarah Butler, and Union spy John Mahan
Bob is a meticulous researcher, known to spend extra time, magnifying glass in hand, deciphering 18th and 19th century handwriting for “just the facts, ma’am.” If not closeted in libraries or museums, you are likely to find him walking centuries-old rice fields, battlefields, or in a canoe following the river trails of his characters. He is a member of the Organization of American Historians and his favorite places to write include his studio, parks, beaches, airplanes, and libraries.
You can find more information about Bob and his books on his website https://bobrogers.biz/. Two Rivers: De Trouble I Be See and The Laced Chameleon are part of the Mérida English Library’s permanent lending collection.
