13 Moons

13 Moons is out! I have been waiting a long time for this. I wrote this novel four years ago but it had to wait for all three of my Infinity Blast books to be released. Now it's finally here. It features my great-grandfather George Campbell and takes place in the Minnesota Territory in the mid-1850s. I became interested in genealogy a few years ago and, in particular, my maternal grandmother's branch of the family tree. She came from a long line of fur traders who worked in the Minnesota Territory and up into Manitoba, Ontario, and Québec. George's great grandfather emigrated from Ireland to the Red River area in Manitoba. Beginning with him, three successive generations of intermarriage with indigenous women resulted in George who was almost fully indigenous by genetics but who was raised in a primarily European, settler context in Wabasha, MN.

I focused on George Campbell because I was struck by the fact that his parents weren't married and his mother left shortly after he was born to go back to Thunder Bay. His father, a voyageur, left George in the care of his grandmother and various aunts. George left home at the age of 15 and joined the Union army, fought in the Civil War, came back to the great lakes region and worked transporting logs downriver, then applied for an allotment on the Lake Traverse Reservation where he became a farmer. My grandmother was born there and grew up there until she was 13. George seemed, from the few facts I could gather, to be an adventurous guy, but also probably someone with an outsider perspective.

I did a huge amount of research for this book. I tried to make it as historically accurate as possible. If you would like to check out my list of sources, you can find it here.

Below is the only known photo of George Campbell. I don't know how old he was when this photo was taken or where he was geographically or in his life's jouney. He looks stiff and a bit unhappy though. I hope it was just the clothing he is wearing. He can't have been used to wearing a collar and tie like that.

A couple of interesting documents I came across: