Hungers as Old as This Land by Zachary Rosenberg
An exciting wild west tale
Florida author Zachary Rosenberg is a practicing lawyer, and now an author. His books to date – THE DEVILS AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, THE LONG SHALOM and HUNGERS AS OLD AS THIS LAND. His penchant is for horror fiction, and he practices it well! In this novel he reenacts the Civil War era and demonstrates his skill at painting a scene and atmosphere at book’s opening: ’The battlefield breathed death. He could smell it, almost taste it. It had been ten straight hours of musket fire and cannons roaring all throughout Antietam. After all that he had seen, Cyril Redstone was beginning to believe there were no rules to warfare. Clad in a uniform that might have been pristine blue – if not for mingling stains of mud ash and human blood – Cyril crouched down in a trench with an eye set upon Jimmy Franks…’ We quickly learn that Jimmy is a corpse, the ruins of the war in the now famous Battle of Antietam September 17,1862 when the Union repelled the first Confederate invasion of the North, and that degree of horror pervades this excellent novella.
But on to the overview of the story – ‘The settlement of Grey’s Bluffs is a prosperous town, an independent community dwelling in the shadows of the mountains known only as The Hungers. Esther Foxman and Siobhan O’Clery have grown up in Grey’s Bluffs, thriving out on the western territories in the aftermath of the Civil War. Devoted to one another and their home, the two set out to complete a regular pact at the Hungers to ensure that Grey’s Bluffs continues to prosper. Cyril Redstone is a man who knows death well. Becoming a mercenary after the Civil War, Cyril leads the marauding Blackhawks from one slaughter to the next. Hired to destroy Grey’s Bluffs, Cyril cares little for morality, nor that he owes its founder his life. Esther and Siobhan are left to defend the only home they have ever known from the Blackhawks, their confrontation driving them deep into the mountains where the darkest secrets of the Hungers await them.’ One of the several reasons this author’s book is so welcome is his focusing the primary couple as two women, allowing Jewish and LGBTQ overtones to surface in an historic setting! Keep an eye on this creative writer – he appears to be headed up the literary ladder!
