Today, I'm delighted to welcome Paul Rushworth-Brown to the #HistFicThursdays blog as part his Coffee Pot Book Club 's book tour. Today, meet Paul's new book The Lost Voices , and discover your next great read! Read on to enjoy an excerpt from this gripping book! First of all, let's meet the book... Some lives pass through history without leaving a trace. The Lost Voices is a work of historical fiction that brings to light those whose stories were never formally recorded—not because they lacked significance, but because their lives unfolded beyond the reach of power, authorship, and recognition. This is the story of ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances—individuals navigating a rigid social order shaped by obligation, fear, and quiet resistance. Here, survival depends as much on silence as on action, and choices are made not in moments of glory, but in private, under pressure, and with consequences rarely acknowledged. The novel explores how perso...
"Barely fourteen, Ceci Prejean is a tomboy running wild in the hot Louisiana summer. After breaking the nose of a local boy, her father decides to enlist the aid of Hecubah, a beautiful Creole woman, with a secret past, who takes Ceci in hand and turns her into a lady. Now, eighteen-year-old Ceci meets and falls passionately in love with a handsome young northerner, Trent Sinclaire. Trent is a cadet at the West Point military academy. He acts as if he knows Ceci. They begin a torrid affair, even as the southern states begin to secede from the Union. Only weeks before their wedding, the Confederate army attacks Fort Sumter and the civil war begins. Trent is called to active service in the north, leaving Ceci heartbroken in the south. Swearing vengeance on the union, after the untimely death of her family at the fall of New Orleans, Ceci meets with infamous spy master, Henry Doucet. He initiates her into the shadowy world of espionage. After her failure to avert the catast...