Nick K. Adams
Author & Storyteller
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Title: My Dear Wife and Children: Civil War Letters from a 2nd Minnesota Volunteer
Author: Nick K. Adams
Genre: Civil War History
No. of Words: 132,000
Published by Strategic Book Publishing Company
ISBN: 978-1-62857-966-6 and 978-1-68181-290-8
Available from the author, Strategic Book Publishing, Aunties Books (Spokane, WA), Kings Books (Tacoma, WA), Orca Books (Olympia, WA), Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, MN), Chickamauga National Battlefield Bookstore (Fort Oglethorpe, GA), Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble Bookstores
Synopsis:
What does a father write to his wife and young children when he's gone to war? Does he explain why he left them? How does he answer their constant questions about his return? Which of his experiences does he relate, and which does he pass over? Should he describe his feelings of separation and loneliness?
These questions are as relevant today as they were over 150 years ago, when David Brainard Griffin, a corporal in Company F of the 2nd Minnesota Regiment of Volunteers, wrote to those he left behind on the family's Minnesota prairie homestead while he fought to preserve the Union.
His letters cover the period from his enlistment at Minnesota’s Fort Snelling in September 1861, to his death in Georgia during the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. One hundred of them were preserved and passed down in his family. They, along with one from his daughter as she asked the next generation to read her father's words, have been carefully transcribed and annotated by a great-great grandson, Nick K. Adams, allowing further generations to experience Griffin's answers to these questions.
Filled with poignant images of his daily activities, his fears and exhilarations in military conflicts, and his thoughts and emotions as the Civil War kept him apart from his family, these letters offer a fascinating insight into the personal experiences of
a common soldier in the American Civil War.
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Hard Cover: $26.00
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Title: Away at War: A Civil War Story of the
Family Left Behind
Author: Nick K. Adams
Genre: Historical Fiction
No. of Words:
Published by: Strategic Publishing Group
ISBN: 978-1-68181-992-1
Available From: The author, Strategic Publishing,
Aunties Books (Spokane, WA),
University Bookstore (Tacoma, WA)
Barnes & Noble Bookstores
Synopsis:
This is a true story of survival during the American Civil War. It tells of the difficult life on a mid-nineteenth century Minnesota prairie homestead for a mother and her three young children while her husband is away, having answered Lincoln's call for volunteers to help preserve the Union.
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Away at War is based on 100 letters the soldier wrote his family during his two years of service, which ended with his death at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia.
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The book opens with David Brainard Griffin's farewell to his family, along with his promise to return. Philinda Minerva and her three children (Alice Jane - 7, Ida May - 5, and Edgar Lincoln - 9 months) are left to run the family farm on their own.
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Minnesota's seasons dictate their activities during the cycle of fall harvest, winter withdrawal, spring planting, summer garden and haying, and a return to fall harvesting. Even with the help of nearby family and friends, the hardships and responsibilities are almost beyond them. But the only support Brainard can provide them is the weekly letters he writes, and the small amounts of money he sends.
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Title: The Uncivil War:
The Battle in the Classroom
Author: Nick K. Adams
Genre: Historical Fiction
Age/Grade Focus: Grade 3-5
No. of Words: 19,000
Published by Eloquent Books of Strategic Book Group.
ISBN 9781-60911-7115
Available from the author, Strategic Publishing, Aunties Books (Spokane, WA), Kings Books (Tacoma, WA), Orca Books (Olympia, WA), Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, MN), Chickamauga National Battlefield (Fort Oglethorpe, GA), Amazon.com (Paperback and Kindle) and Barnes & Noble Bookstores (Paperback and Nook).
Synopsis:
Morgan Huddleston and Jeremy Wiggins have shared a classroom for three years, disliking each other the whole time because of their constant competition. Then a fourth grade social studies assignment reveals they are directly connected by tragic events that occurred 150 years earlier.
As assigned, Morgan and Jeremy each contact relatives knowledgeable of their respective family's involvement in the American Civil War. Both learn they had a great-great-great grandfather at the battle of Chickamauga - but ironically on opposite sides.
We meet these men in alternating flashbacks. Biff Huddleston is a young cavalryman from Tennessee, newly enlisted, excited but unsure of himself, facing his first battle. By contrast, D. Brainard Griffin has been away from his Minnesota family for two years, fighting this seemingly endless war.
Morgan, characteristically, returns first with her findings: the distant grandfather who fought for the Confederacy at Chickamauga. The following day, when Jeremy reports that his family's Union soldier was killed at the same battle, the big "What if...?" question is raised.
In parallel flashbacks, the fatal scene is viewed from both soldiers' perspectives. Their lives have now tragically mesh.
How the two students arrive at a resolution that ends their own "Uncivil War" is the heartening conclusion of this story.
Using contemporary settings, flashbacks based on historical characters and units (including information and quotations from preserved letters written home over a period of two years by my own grandfather Griffin), and actual battlefield events at Chickamauga, the story demonstrates how history can become magically alive when its students become personally involved.
Title: Maude & Otis
Author: Nick K. Adams
Gener: Children's Picture Book
Age/Grade Focus: 1-2
No. of Words: 1,200
Available for publishing consideration
Synopsis:
Maude and Otis are toads who run a 50's style "Fine Diner." Otis has grown slightly rotund from working too close to the food, while Maude extends the grandest toad smile you've ever seen. Folks come from miles around for a stack of Otis's plate-sized flap-jacks, or a slice of Maude's fabulous Shoo-fly pie.
But Jeffrey Jack Rabbit arrives with a bandaged head as well as an empty stomach, and is in need of advice for dealing with a bully. The approaches offered by the two toads differ greatly. Whose advice will work better is the essence of this story.
Beyond a thoroughly enjoyable story, the characters also provide young readers with an alternative non-violent method to resolve their conflicts.