Historical Fiction of Byron Grush

  Latest novel: 'Till Them Eagles Grin A story of the Great Depression available at Amazon      The years between the stock market crash of 1929 and the end of World War II in 1945 were the years of the Great Depression. Nearly 13 million people, about 25 percent of the work force was unemployed. Many became homeless and took refuge in makeshift shanty communities called Hoovervilles. The decade between 1930 and 1940 saw severe droughts, floods, and high temperatures. The resulting Dust Bowl sent migrates west to California. Young people took to hoboing, riding the rails and living in hobo jungles. The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt took action with many social programs, but recovery was slow. This is the story of a few of those people, their good times and bad. It is a story of a young man’s brush with organized crime, another’s life jumping freights and picking fruit, an aspiring blues musician encountering racism both in the north and the south, and two young wom

Read an excerpt from “Teddy’s Road,”  a short story in the anthology, On the Road Again by Byron Grush On the Road Again Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin: The Twin Ports. At the end of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, this is the largest inland freshwater port in North America. Iron ore from the Marquette Range in Michigan, the Vermilion Range in Minnesota, and the Mesabi Range near Mountain Iron, Minnesota will be shipped from here to mills in Detroit and Cleveland. The season lasts only ten months; soon ice will cover most of Lake Superior and ice-breakers will be needed to keep commerce floating as long as possible. Shipped by rail to Duluth, iron ore, coal, wheat, and lumber will be loaded onto freighters from dozens of long piers at the Twin Ports. Like slender fingers extending out into the harbor, the long piers can accommodate the monster ships: thousand-footers, whalebacks, lakers, and salties. Tall metal structures straddle the piers: cranes which run on elevated tracks

 A new book of short stories On the Road Again Come with us on a road trip. Travel with us along the old roads, the transcontinental, the coastal...along rivers, through deserts, short trips and long...with a dozen stories of people and places, their journeys and adventures, their beginnings, and endings. There is nothing quite like the open road: open, endless, inviting, seducing. We will drive the Overseas Highway, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Lincoln Highway, the Victory Highway, Route 66. We will visit Boston, Sacramento, Key West, Tijuana, the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. Having a wonderful time…wish you were here! now in kindle and paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B85JTNX8

 Read a sample chapter from Time Coda: It is 2061 CE. Halley's Comet has struck Earth and begun a mass extinction. On the planet Mars, colonies have been established by various entities, countries, and privet corporations. Our sample chapter involves some of the exiles from Earth. 10 Meanwhile Back on Mars   The Footsteps to Mars Project’s Mars colony is located in the vast, low-lying Martian plain called Hellas Planitia. Hellas Planitia in turn is located within the Hellas basin, one of the largest impact craters on Mars and probably the third or fourth largest in the Solar System. The crater has a diameter of roughly 1,400 miles, a depth of 23,465 feet, and an atmospheric pressure of between 0.09 and 0.18 psi (compared to Earth’s surface pressure of 14.7 psi), about 3 percent greater than most of the rest of the planet. There are three smaller craters in the eastern portion of the plain which contain glaciers of ancient ice buried deep beneath layers of dirt and rock These condit

  New book just published! Time Coda at Amazon.com 2061: Halley’s comet collides with the Earth, and a massive extinction is underway. From a bomb shelter near San Antonio, Texas, four people emerge and begin a journey to find somewhere on Earth they can survive the desolation. Some lucky Earthlings have already escaped to start a colony at the Hellas Planitia on Mars, but is their luck starting to run out? 1963, Elmira, New York: a veteran time traveler is surprised to find a time machine materializing on his driveway. Past experiences have taught him about the dangers of changing history, but recent events prompt him to take the risk of saving a certain life, if only he can learn how to operate the machine. Realities for each of the players in our drama intersect at junctures within the multiverse. History will fold and unfold before their eyes. Will they change history, or will history change them?

Read the introductory chapter from Perihelion:   The Ghost of Novels Past   It was a particularly sultry night in mid-July of 2020, almost tropical with humidity although this was southeastern Wisconsin. I was tossing and turning, throwing off sheets damp with sweat, mostly tormented with worries: there was a pandemic racing through the world that nobody seemed able (and some unwilling) to stop. But there was more that was keeping me awake. The fear of the virus had kept us from visiting our favorite restaurants, carry-out was not quite up to our standards, and I was getting bored with my usual repertoire of chile, pulled pork, and the obligatory bratwursts. I had decided to do something atypical, perhaps exotic. Asian fare, East Indian cuisine, Ethiopian dishes, all required ingredients I was unlikely to find at our Piggly Wiggly store, however. I settled on Welsh Rarebit for no reason other than that I had been perusing some books from my library that reprinted old comic strips and h