Uncertain Times

Uncertain Times

Historical

Pages: 214 Ratings:

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Times have changed since the grandiose days of Tampa, Florida, in 1890. The success that Quinn and Mika enjoyed at Henry Plant’s illustrious Tampa Bay Hotel changed as well. Twenty years saw the passing of Mr. Plant and the decline of his hotel and its standards, while Tampa’s cigar industry rose to international prominence. Also intervening was Mika, bearing fraternal twins. Marc, the elder by fifteen minutes, is dark-skinned like his mother. Ian favors his father in skin tone and disposition. Mika and Quinn have found that contriving time alone together has become a challenge.

Quinn is the 1910 St. Andrews Chamber of Commerce president. The tourist season is ending, and he, Mika, and the twins are once again off to Florida for the winter. As they prepare to leave St. Andrews, Canada’s trade union movement arrives and attempts to organize the town. Quinn knows nothing about labor negotiations and endeavors to avoid confrontation but becomes entangled in worker demands.

Arriving in Tampa, Quinn and Mika discover that the city fathers are locked in mortal combat with a new union movement called La Resistencia. Union walkouts lead to protest marches, people are killed, two are lynched, and the town is burned. Quinn, Mika, and the boys are caught in a riot; a hurricane wipes out Tampa.

Gale Forbes often contends that he got into writing to scratch a persistent itch. The yen to write started before high school as he read books and accounts of WWII by Ernie Pyle, Winston Churchill, Richard Tregaskis, and others. Looking back, he calls it an awakening of the power of words.

After graduating from the University of Michigan School of Architecture, he gained recognition in his profession by writing essays and op-ed pieces for industry trade magazines. His style is to set the reader on his shoulder and witness the action as the scene unfolds.

Like most novice writers, he wrote short fiction with peers in different writing groups. He was a regular at the once-annual Women’s Writers Conference. When he turned his architectural practice over to others, he found success with short stories and then ventured into historical fiction with his first novel, Mother’s People, set in 1874, follows three generations of mothers confronted by the unforeseen acts of their children. Set in 1890, his second novel, Changing Times, follows the struggles of a third-generation fisherman as progress comes to his remote village. Uncertain Times, his third novel, picks up the story of Changing Time but twenty years later.

Visit the author’s page at https://www.amazon.com/galeforbes