The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story - Softcover

Swaim, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 161498154X ISBN 13: 9781614981541

Publisher: Hippocampus Press, 2016

Synopsis

The novel is based on the real-life literary celebrity Ambrose Bierce, who mysteriously vanished in Mexico in 1913. In summary: The 71-year-old Bierce crosses into revolutionary Mexico where he encounters Pancho Villa. Not only does Bierce save Pancho's life but develops a close relationship with the bandito-supremo. Dreaming of death and reliving the past, Bierce accompanies Pancho through exhilarating war-time adventures until the two men find themselves in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1915. There, Bierce meets a handsome young widow, and discovers he still has the capability of falling in love, despite the years separating them. Throughout all he is pursued by The Damned Thing. In flashbacks and literary digressions, the reader learns about Bierce's turbulent early life and his associations with historical figures such as Mark Twain, Bret Harte, William Gladstone, Oscar Wilde, Theodore Roosevelt, P.T. Barnum, and William Randolph Hearst. The reader also sees Bierce's development as a chronicler of the horrors of the Civil War and his weird tales, his conversion into a cynic and misanthrope, his role as a major literary arbiter, and finally as a man who learns to love in his twilight years.

About this title

From the Author

Jared Boggess is the talented Virginia artist who designed the striking cover for The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story. On Tumblr, Boggess describes the progress of creating the vivid cover: jaredboggess.tumblr.com/post/137634951113/heres-a-process-gif-for-my-new-cover. The book's design was by David E. Schultz, himself one of the great scholars of the American weird tale.

From the Back Cover

THE ASSASSINATION OF AMBROSE BIERCE: A LOVE STORY by Don Swaim

• Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) is one of the most colorful and inscrutable figures in American literature. He had a long literary career in San Francisco before disappearing in a cloud of smoke in the Mexican Civil War. His life story is ripe for fictional treatment, and Don Swaim has brought all of his knowledge of Bierce--and his skill as a novelist--to bear in THE ASSASSINATION OF AMBROSE BIERCE.
• The novel tells of Bierce's departure from his home in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1913 and his venture into Mexico, where he meets a number of the leading figures in the Mexican Civil War, notably Pancho Villa. Intermixed with Bierce's lively encounters with the ill-educated and violent Villa are passages where Bierce recalls the more notable episodes of a long and rich life, notably his participation in some of the greatest battles of the Civil War.
• In the end, Bierce, after escaping death on several occasions in the Mexican Civil War, ventures up with Villa to Saratoga Springs, where he unexpectedly falls in love with a fetching woman, Elizabeth Dumont, justifying Swaim's provocative subtitle ("A Love Story"). Along the way, Bierce also has repeated encounters with "The Damned Thing"--the baleful figure of death.
• This novel--by turns moving, funny, and terrifying--will be richly enjoyed by aficionados of Ambrose Bierce and with any readers who like a well-told tale that evokes the past with vividness and panache.
• Don Swaim is the author of Steampunk Electroblaster Romance, The H.L. Mencken Murder Case, and other works. He runs the most comprehensive website on Ambrose Bierce.
• HISTORICAL/SUPERNATURAL: Hippocampus Press, New York
• Cover Art: Jared Boggess

About this edition

• Publisher: Hippocampus Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 161498154X
• ISBN 13: 9781614981541
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392