The Prize by Blog Tour! (+25$ Amazon GC Giveaway!)

Title: The Prize
Author: Lars D. H. Hedbor
Series: N/A
Pages:184
Publisher: Puddletown Publishing Group
Date Published: June 28th 2011
Format: ebook
Genre: Historical Fiction 

Synopsis:
Caleb's father is serving with Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys as the long-anticipated open war against the British rages up and down the length of Lake Champlain. Between his duties on the family farm and constant worry about his father's safety, the young man's attentions are already fully occupied when a fateful encounter with an unlikely neighbor changes everything. Pulled into new intrigues and new friendships, Caleb finds himself on a path that changes his life - and which will affect the outcome of the whole war. 

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Why Read Historical Fiction Anyways?? 

Guest Post by Lars D.H. Hedbor

 When our daily lives are filled with technology in all its glorious forms, reading about people and events of the distant past may seem about as relevant as churning our own butter instead of running down to the grocery store when we run out. However, as The philosopher George Santayana famously observed, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

With the way that much history teaching and teaching is conducted, too, studying the past can seem a daunting proposition - all of those dates and names and battles and geography to keep straight! There is another approach, though, that can provide not only a clearer understanding of our past, but can bring to life the people and places involved in a way that no mere classroom recitation of facts could even do - historical fiction.

A carefully-researched, well-written historical fiction novel returns history to its roots - stories, about people. It reminds us that the nearly mythical figures of the past were, in fact, human beings like us, folks who lay awake at night with anxiety about the day to come, ached with longing for the object of their affections, coughed when they got a tickle in their throats, and wept at the losses that visited their lives.

The events that unfolded around them, for the most part, didn't feel like "history" to them, but rather, were just their everyday lives, and their actions - now seen as heroic or vile - were simply the best choices they could make, of the options available to them. Too, most great events in history are shaped by far more people than the few names that show up in textbooks and on roadside historical markers. Reading about how they faced those events can help remind us that the seemingly insignificant decisions we make in our everyday lives might just have historical implications, in the fullness of time.

As you are drawn in by a good historical fiction novel, too, you may well find that you become curious about things that are just off stage of the story. Whether it's an event that one of the characters alludes to, or a person about whom you just have to know more, a really good historical novel can inspire you to undertake some research of your own. You might look for another novel at examines the same events from a slightly different viewpoint, or you may find that nothing short of primary sources and thick academic tomes will satisfy your itch to better understand the stories of the characters you've come to know and love (or hate).

While a "serious" historian might look down her nose at you for relying on historical fiction to learn what lessons the past may hold for your life today, most novelists in the genre take very seriously their responsibility to get the facts of their stories right. Ultimately, though, any avenue that leads us to a better understanding of the past, and informs our approach to the events we are caught up in ourselves helps us to make better decisions as to how we'll respond, and makes it more likely that when the history of our times is written, we'll be happy with what is said.

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Meet Lars!

AUTHOR INFORMATION:
Lars D. H. Hedbor is an amateur historian, homebrewer, astronomer, fiddler, linguist
and baker. His fascination with the central question of how the populace of the
American Colonies made the transition from being subjects of the Crown to being
citizens of the Republic drives him to tell the stories of those people. Hedbor resides in
the Pacific Northwest with his wife and five daughters, and is hard at work on the next
novel in the Tales From a Revolution series.

Because Lars is just an upstanding guy like that, he has provided a 25$ Amazon or B&N Giftcard to giveaway during this blog tour! Comment below with your email address in order to be entered into the drawing! On the Saturday following the tour Lars will email you personally to give you your winnings, so comment away my lovelies!