SCOT STORYTELLERS
James Mikel Wilson ’66
Melissa Scholes Young ’97
Gregory W. Young ’68
GHOSTS OF PRESIDENTS PAST:
THE HIVE
THE FREEMASONS WHO WON AMERICA’S WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE:
A Reckoning Paperback Fiction, 434 pages Gatekeeper Press What would his White House predecessors have advised President Donald Trump? In this allegorical novel, released just prior to the November election, James Mikel Wilson employs a Dickensian formula in which 23 former U.S. presidents in ghostly forms visit a sitting president loosely based on Trump. A presidential historian, Wilson imagines encounters featuring both well-known presidents such as Andrew Jackson and lesser-known chief executives such as James Garfield. While he had originally been set to release the book last March, he is glad his publisher advised him to wait, as it allowed him to weave a viral pandemic into the plot.
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MONMOUTH COLLEGE MAGAZINE
Hardcover Fiction, 320 pages Turner Publishing Release Date: June 8, 2021 Preorder on Amazon
In her second novel, to be released in June, Melissa Scholes Young explores feminism from her personal rural Missouri roots, as four sisters struggle to keep their family-owned business afloat. Facing an economic recession amidst the backdrop of growing Midwestern fear and resentment, the sisters unite in their struggle to save their fourth-generation pest control company’s finances and the family’s future. To survive, they must overcome a political chasm that threatens a new civil war as the values that once united them now divide the very foundation they’ve built. Through alternating points of view, grief and regret gracefully give way to the enduring strength of the hive.
Washington, Franklin & Their Brothers Paperback Nonfiction, 277 pages Available on Amazon The past master of a Masonic lodge, Young tells the intriguing story of how Freemasons helped launch the American Revolution and how Benjamin Franklin’s Masonic connections brought France into the war, helping to cement American victory. The book traces Washington’s reliance on generals who were fellow Masons and his use of Masonic resources to achieve the first victory at Trenton. Along the way, readers are introduced to Masonic soldiers, spies, diplomats and financiers who founded the nation.
