Nick West

Nick West began serious writing several years ago. His first book, The Great Southern Circus, was an effort to put to the printed page the wonderful stories that his grandmother told him as a child. His two great-grandparents were part of a circus troupe that toured the southeastern United States from 1858 to 1860. James Johnston joined the circus to be with his first true love, Miranda Madderra, whom he stumbled across while she practiced her bareback horse act near his home on Sand Mountain, Alabama. The friends he made during this two-year adventure would change his life forever. This book ends with the onset of the American Civil War as James rides away to join the Confederate Cavalry.

"The Great Southern Circus" was so well received by readers outside his own family who inquired what had happened to the circus people during the War that he wrote a sequel, "The Long Road Home". This book picks up the story where "The Great Southern Circus" leaves off, at the onset of the American Civil War, when half of the circus troupe joins the Union and half the Confederate cause. He follows the owner of the circus's son as an officer in the Union Army, a young black man who had used the travels of the circus to search for his sister, who was sold into slavery when she was thirteen years old, and James and Miranda, whose tragic years during the War presented the conflagragation of war from the southern view. This book, like "The Great Southern Circus," was very well received by readers.

His third book, "The Sandspur Special," follows the descendants of the circus family as they finally move to north-central Florida in 1917. This was an area that Miranda and James had visited during the circus tour, and one which Miranda had always aspired to move to. The family was too poverty-stricken at the end of the war to make the move, but she passed her love of Florida on to her daughter and her family through often-repeated stories. Still a frontier wilderness, the Alabama farm family now has to learn to live without electricity and running water as they adapt to a new world in the wilderness of the Sunshine State.

Nick's fourth book, "To Light a New Fire", is the story of a young native American Florida couple who must learn to cope with the hardships encountered during the first European contact in the mid-1500s. This story is an accurate portrayal of people's lives, loves, laughter and heartache made accurate by years of research conducted by scholars at the University of Florida. Told in the form of a historical novel of romance and adventure, this book brings to life members of both the Florida Indians and the Spanish and French explorers who changed both civilizations forever.

His fifth book, "Miranda's Gold", tells the story of a young Florida boy, enthralled by stories his great uncle, a Florida Game Warden, told him about a buried Spanish Treasure hidden along the Santa Fe River in north-central Florida. The boy's search for the gold along with the young Spanish girl he met as a senior in High School became a lifetime obsession that carried them through the years of the Vietnam War, college at the University of Florida, and a teasure hunt that brought adventure and death as the hunt was joined by an organized crime family from Spain, who considered the treasure theirs by heritage.

Nick's sixth book, "Suwannee Wild", is a sequel to "Miranda's Gold". The young man, named Charlie Palmer is married to his high school sweetheart, Miranda. Miranda has graduated from medical school and Charlie his his dream job as one of the first two Federal Game Wardens patrolling the Lower Suwannee Nation Wildlife Refuge. As Miranda is establishing her practice in Gainesville, Charlie finds that he might have bitten off more than he could chew when the Miami Cocaine smugglers decide to move their import business to the very wilderness that Charlie has sworn to protect. There is much more danger lurking in the Florida swamp than snakes and alligators.

Nick is currently working on his seventh book, "Storm of the Century". This book is the third of the Charlie Palmer series and takes place approximately five years after "Suwannee Wild" as he and his partner Danny Devore face an oncoming hurricane as well as a mentally disturbed Vietnam veteran who blames the two game wardens for the death of his cousin that occurred during a shoot out with Columbian drug smugglers in "Suwannee Wild". The disturbed man has escaped from a V.A. Hospital and has sworn to kill both game wardens. Miranda is working hard to expand her medical practice and she and Charlie have built their own dream home on the banks of the Santa Fe River near High Springs using a portion of the funds generated by their discovery of the Spanish Treasure they had finally found on the very property that her parents had given them for a wedding gift.

Can they survive the rage of a madman combined with a Category 5 Hurricane? Find out by reading "Storm of the Century", coming in 2025.