HESSIAN JOHN

About the Book

Continuing from Book I (Hessian John, 19th Century Military Surgeon, that ended in 1849) and Book II (Hessian John, Army Surgeon in the Pioneer West that ended in 1861), 44-year-old Mississippi plantation-owner Johann becomes a Confederate Army surgeon helping to organize the South’s medical corps and serving briefly as a Southern spy in the Union’s medical headquarters in Washington. While in the Union Army, he serves as a battlefield surgeon in the opening battles of the Civil War where he is wounded, captured by his own army, and returned to Confederate service where he continues as an army surgeon until sent on a gold-collecting mission to California serving President Davis’s hopes to stabilize the collapsing Confederate economy and to overcome the South’s blockaded access to European weapons and supplies. Finally, he participates in the attempted escape of President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet officials, ultimately returning to his Davis Bend plantation, Lindenbaum, where he is faced with the harsh problems of the Reconstruction Era so troubling to many Old-South landowners. In this third of a four-book series, military surgeon John continues on a stark Civil War Journey through mid-19th-Century Southern and Western America, participating in major historical events that deeply influenced his life.

About the Author

Colonel Don Walbrecht (the 11th pilot of the Mach-3 SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft) served 30 years as an Air Force officer, participating in advanced-aircraft development activities, leading Pentagon operational programming and budgeting matters, and holding transpacific and transatlantic staff and command positions. He earned three graduate degrees including a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in Norfolk, England and completed three professional military courses at the Air University in Montgomery, Alabama. He currently serves as Professor of Aviation Management for the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho where he supervises graduate-level military research projects. He is the author of two earlier books in this Hessian John series as well as a scientific-fiction poetic romaunt, On Silent Wing, and a doctoral dissertation, the Diplomatic History of U.S. Airpower in the United Kingdom.