Historical Fiction of Byron Grush

buy the book Once Upon a Gold Rush 5.0 out of 5 stars A great tale about some fascinating people By William A. Mego This is an extremely well-researched and insightful look at a period that could be best described as a passing madness, as men and women sought easy fortunes in the soils of California. And Grush serves it to us with all the flavor and detail we've come to expect. I am a fool for boats, so I treasured being able to enjoy a trip around the horn without having to experience the panic and frozen limbs those journeys usually required. Another welcome story about a remarkable family. 5.0 out of 5 stars Another Intriguing Story By Nancy M. Mego "Once Upon a Gold Rush" continues the story of the Grosh family, following three of them as they travel with a wagon train from Illinois to California in 1850. The story is rich with detail of pioneer life as was the preceding book, " All the Way by Water." Starting from fragments of actual family history, "O...

buy the book All The Way By Water 4.0 out of 5 stars NEW WRITER worth READING By flyingtulips Family, Facts & Fiction. Wonderful thoroughly enjoyable story based in fact. Well written. My favorite segment was his description of "WATER". 5.0 out of 5 stars A True River Trip By Robert Carroll Byron Grush treats us to a river trip back in time. His writing stirs our imagination of times gone by. This is not a tale of fiction. It is as close to fact as one can make it two centuries later. It seems he has related much of actual life from old letters and genealogy search. You can see the morning sunrise flicker on the water and watch the wildlife along the river voyage West. -A new life for a Christian family. I think the story depicts a true image of our forefathers; their adventurous nature, always searching for a better life. I enjoyed reading this account of what we all can relate to. -The spirit of America in it's youth. It seemed always to be moving out. -Always movin...

Mount Shasta engraving from Pituresque America,  New York, 1870 by Appleton & Co.  The Old Man of the Mountain excerpt from Once Upon a Gold Mine by Byron Grush Mount Shasta, September, 1855 Shasta Mountain sits with singularity on an ancient wilderness landscape. Rising to 14,179 feet, she can be seen from 140 miles away. She is an active volcano but bides her time. The Karuk called her Úytaahkoo. The Wintu called her Bohem Puyuik. The Pit River Indians called her Ako-Yet. The Atsuge called her Yeh te che na. The Hudson ’s Bay Company trappers called her Sastise, Sistise, or Sasty, misspellings of the name of an Indian tribe they found living at the base of the mountain. These were the Shasta Indians. They called the mountain Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki, which means to “walk around and around, but never on top.” These same Indians held Shasta sacred. She figured in their creation myth. This tells that the mountain is the Great Spirit’s wigwam with a smoke hole at the top; tha...

Playlist Songs quoted in the text or referred to  in chapter headings  in the novel, Dance Beneath a Diamond Sky by Byron Grush buy it at Amazon.com These songs are for the most part from the 1960s and helped inspire the writing of the novel. The links below will send you to youtube for a listen. Or, just get out your own vintage vinyl versions! “12:30 (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon)” – John Phillips and Cass Elliot Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical – music by Galt MacDermot “Chicken is Nice” – Liberian Folk Song (version by Dave Van Ronk) “Come Together” – John Lennon & Yoko Ono “Greatest Story Ever Told” (…the one thing we need now is a left-hand monkey wrench) – Grateful Dead; Bob Weir, Robert Hunter, Michael S. Hart “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” – John Lennon & Yoko Ono/The Plastic Ono Band “Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?” – Billy Roberts (version by Jimi Handrix) “House of the Rising Sun” – traditional (version by Joan Baez) “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-...

Chicago in Flames by Currier and Ives, 1871 Chicago Fire excerpt from  Road of Stars   by Byron Grush Chicago, October 8, 1871: there has been only about an inch of rain in the last one hundred days; dry leaves cover lawns whose grass has turned brown; everywhere the wooden planks of the sidewalks are cracked from a lack of moisture. And now the city is preparing for winter. Hay is piled high in barns and cords of wood are stacked along the sides of houses. In the poorer districts like Conley’s Patch, tenement buildings are built so close to one another that their wood shingle roofs nearly touch. All across the Midwest the drought and unusually high temperatures have created fire hazards; in fact, small fires have erupted in dried-out cedar swaps and peat bogs in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois. The dead branches of trees and the dust from sawmill wastes have been dumped thoughtlessly into creek beds now devoid of water. Farmers have continued the dangerous practice of cleari...

Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Luncheon at the Dead Rat by Byron Grush Vidocq Visits the Morgue He wasn’t the Vidocq, merely his son…or at least, that was what he claimed. Emile-Adolphe Vidocq was the son of the first wife of François Eugène Vidocq, the world’s first private detective. When François Vidocq died Emile-Adolphe sought to be recognized as his alleged father’s legitimate offspring but it turned out that the elder Vidocq had been in prison when the conception would have taken place. No inheritance for Emile-Adolphe. Perhaps an obsession with the establishment of this paternity contributed to Emile-Adolphe’s following in his famous father’s footsteps. At any rate, Emile-Adolphe Vidocq now promoted himself as a detective for hire; the fame and popularity of the first Vidocq guaranteed clients and an adequate source of income. He had just been hired by François Gardinier to locate his missing son, Geoffroy. Where better to start than at the morgue? The father, François Eugène Vidocq...

Excerpt from Chapter 11 1954, or Just Press the I Believe Button by Byron Grush Alien Origins It is from Hmnogykwaer, the rebel Grey who eventually befriended Nate, that we get the story. It is infused with legend and muddled by age, a strange brew whose factual basis may only be wondered upon, but it is all we have. The planet Klivpokla circled the sun, Twodhlog (the star we call Betelgeuse). At the time the legend begins, some 10,000,000 years ago, Twodhlog was not the red supergiant we know today. It was a runaway star, formed many hundreds of parsecs from its present location. Along the path of its journey it meandered through space, buffeted by the explosions of other stars like a giant stellar billiard ball. The stellar wind preceding the young star created a bow shock. It began to cool and expand. It pulsed and transformed into a blue giant, then a red giant, then back again. Solar flares sent gases and star dust millions of miles into space. The fusion at its core suddenly ceas...