Souls of the Soil

by Gloria Waldron Hukle

Overview

"Souls of the Soil" is one tale within another; a contemporary novel that questions the meaning of reality converges with well-researched historical fiction. The story is driven by an actual murder in New York in the year 1756 during the French and Indian War and the discovery of a local family cemetery plot centuries later.

But Gloria Waldron Hukle's final slice of her "American Waldron Book Series" opens long before blood drips from the blade of a sharpened rusty bayonet.

The lives of two sets of fathers and sons, all four of whom share the same DNA, crisscross between centuries in this last of the four book series that began with "Manhattan: Seeds of the Big Apple."

"Souls of the Soil" starts in the year 1679 as a badly burnt, disheartened Dutch immigrant farmer living on Papscanee Island near Albany, laments his loss of everything. It is November on the crystal covered, scorched, fertile land, long held sacred by the indigenous peoples. As the fire smolders, the angry immigrant wonders how he can go forward.

Thus begins the never-ending quest for happiness and meaning, the trek continuing many centuries and generations later in 2014 with the reconciliation of family members brought together by the unexpected death of a close friend.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940156903788
Publisher:	Gloria Waldron Hukle
Publication date:	10/19/2016
Series:	American Waldron Series Novels , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	279
File size:	502 KB

About the Author

Author Gloria Waldron Hukle resides with her husband in Averill Park, New York. She began her authorship in 2006 with Manhattan: Seeds of the Big Apple, the story of the 17th century Waldron family living on Block B in New Amsterdam (which would later be re-named New York City).
A second novel, published in 2007, The Diary of a Northern Moon, a mystery generated by family lore, finds a young woman caught in a web of secrets about her deceased father. Set in Albany and the Adirondack Mountains of New York, the reader is challenged to ask “Who was Ben Waldron?”
Two years later, Threads—An American Tapestry was published. Hukle’s third of her “Amer-ican Waldron Series Novels” is the poignant early 18th Century tale of the affluent Margaret Vandenberg. Half Dutch, half Native American, Margaret is both loved and hated for reasons that haven’t changed among humankind since time began.
Souls of the Soil is the fourth and final of Gloria Waldron Hukle’s “American Waldron Se-ries”, sometimes referred to as “The Waldron Series Novels”. The ‘half-seed’ for Hukle’s wrap-up novel was the actual 1756 murder of Cornelius Waldron, a prosperous farmer living in Upstate New York during the French and Indian War period. The second half of ‘the seed’ is revealed to the reader through the 1980’s character, Steve Carey, a man who questions everything.
Hukle, whose inspiration for her book series was rooted in family genealogy and lore, says:

“Genealogy can often be used as a base for the historical fiction writer. Following the lives of our ancestors brings us into a setting such as New Amsterdam or Half Moon so that time and place both encircle and thread the novel. However, in this writer’s opinion, the line that is drawn between fact and fiction is one word, and that word is ‘possibility’.”

I hope Souls of the Soil prompts readers to reach out and take hold of their own “possibili-ties”.

All of author Gloria Waldron Hukle’s books are available in both printed and e-version.