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"Riveting, exciting...Pamela Clare delivers what readers want."
—New York Times Bestselling Author Connie Mason
"Pamela Clare is a fabulous storyteller whose beautifully written, fast-paced tales will leave you breathless with anticipation. She creates heroes, heroines, and villains with the ease of a master that draw the reader irresistibly into the story, making them part of the pain, the fear . . . and the passion."
—USA Today Bestselling Author Leigh Greenwood
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Historicals
The MacKinnon’s Rangers Trilogy:
The MacKinnon’s Rangers Trilogy is set during the conflict known in the United States as the French and Indian War — the war made famous by the film Last of the Mohicans, which starred Daniel Day Lewis. The rest of the world knows this conflict as the Seven Years’ War. As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to pre-Revolutionary American history because of the conflict inherent during this time — human beings against a vast, untamed wilderness, European cultures in conflict with each other and with Native inhabitants. Conflict is, after all, what gives rise to good stories.
The trilogy tells the stories of three brothers — Iain, Morgan and Connor MacKinnon — transplanted Highlanders who came to North America as boys when their father was exiled from Scotland. Raised on the frontier, they know several Indian tongues and count themselves kin to the Mahican Indians of Stockbridge. Having learned how to track, fight, and hunt from their Mahican friends, they’re at home in the wilderness. And this is where their troubles begin…
When war breaks out, Lord William Wentworth, grandson of His Majesty King George II, coerces the brothers into fighting for the Crown not as Redcoats, but as Rangers — men whose style of fighting is modeled more after Indian than European warfare.
My research for this series of novels centered around Major Robert Rogers, who is credited with turning the Ranger Corps into one of the most successful military organizations in American history. These men, hardened by frontier life and capable of feats that would be difficult for modern soldiers to duplicate, were the Special Forces of their day. Rogers created the Rules of Ranging that are still, in updated form, utilized by U.S. Army Rangers, a testament to Major Rogers’ genius.
Rogers and his Rangers were stationed at Fort Edward on an island in the middle of the Hudson River south of the doomed Fort William Henry. In my books, Fort Edward and Rogers have been brushed aside and replaced with Fort Elizabeth and MacKinnon’s Rangers. Apart from that, I’ve done my best to be historically accurate to the smallest detail, from the items a Ranger carried in his tumpline pack to the rules that guided him in battle.
Each book in the trilogy tells the story of one MacKinnon brother, with the characters repeating from book to book, including the Rangers themselves, a bunch of hearty Scots and stubborn Irish who’ve won my heart. As each brother struggles to win and protect the woman he loves, I explore the history of what is arguably the most significant war in American history, a war that has been called “The War the Made America.”
I hope you enjoy the stories!
Blakewell/Kenleigh Family Trilogy:
The Blakewell/Kenleigh Family Trilogy represents my first three books, and perhaps for that reason is very dear to my heart. Not as closely tied together as the MacKinnon’s Rangers Trilogy, the books nevertheless feature generations of a single family. Set in the 1730s to 1760s, the stories span a period of great change in the American Colonies and the American South, from a time when small to middle-sized farms dominated the landscape to the era of land barons and growing plantations. It’s also a period when colonists gradually came to see themselves as Americans, distinct from their English cousins, though English all the same.
The English side of my family arrived in Jamestown in 1610 — the second wave of ships to come from England — so writing about this region was a lot of fun for me personally. But it was also fascinating when I was able to stretch northward to Fort Pitt for Ride the Fire, which is set during the siege of Fort Pitt during a summer of deadly violence known as Pontiac’s Rebellion. Working with actual soldiers’ diaries from that siege, I was able to reconstruct much of the day-to-day struggles of life at Fort Pitt for my hero, Nicholas, and heroine, Bethie, to experience.
And although there are only three books about this family at this point, I do very much want to expand the trilogy by two to a quintogy. Stay tuned…
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