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NANTICOKE — As someone who has been to war in Vietnam, Don Williams feels comfortable writing about war. He knows a thing about indiscriminate killing as well, having experienced the brutal murder of his correctional officer son in a federal prison.
The Nanticoke man just released his latest book, “To The King’s Health”, a romance novel based on a real life battle of the Revolutionary War, the Cherry Valley Massacre in Central New York in November 1778.
“I have two protagonists, a male who is Loyalist to the king, a Torie, and a female, a Whig, a child of a Patriot. They are in love, but because of their family allegiances, they get split apart,” Williams said. “The book is about how the geopolitical landscape of the American Revolution tears apart the lives of everyday people. That’s it in a nutshell.”
Williams, 81, said people in Northeastern Pennsylvania might be interested in the book because the Loyalist forces that committed the Cherry Valley Massacre — a mixed force of British soldiers, Senecas, and Mohawks led by ‘Butler’s Rangers’ — were the same group who committed the Wyoming Massacre here.
Many of the Butler’s Rangers were British Loyalists from Northeastern Pennsylvania.
“To The King’s Health” is Williams second novel based on a true event of the American Revolution. His previous book, “Eighteen for Mercy”, released in January 2019, centered on the Gnadenhutten Massacre in the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhutten, Ohio, in March 1782.
The massacre was the killing of 96 pacifist Christian Moravian Indians by a colonial American militia from Washington County, Pennsylvania.
The theme of the book was revenge for the murder of family members. He dedicated that book to his son, Eric, 34, who was viciously killed by an inmate in February 2013 at United States Penitentiary at Canaan. Williams supported the death penalty for his son’s killer, who eventually was sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he was already serving for a previous murder in Arizona.
Both books weave a fictional tale into real life events, Williams said.
“If you tell history from the human side, it brings it to life. It allows a reader to experience it,” Williams said. “I particularly like the Colonial frontier warfare. My books don’t take sides – you know whether it’s a Loyalist or a Patriot. I don’t get into who is right or wrong. I believe in that particular warfare no one is right. It’s all savage.”
Williams’ latest book is available at Amazon.com for $14.95.
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