Book 1 of the Matari Series

A young John Saxton looks on helplessly as brutal slavers on the slave ship Wanderer throw their human cargo overboard to avoid capture by the American Naval Patrol. From then on, the Boston shipping heir and his giant Maasai mentor Matari (Marcus Brown) become implacable abolitionists.

A supporting cast of unforgettable characters are caught up in a web of murder, dark secrets and political intrigue. Arrayed against them are two arch villains: Horatio Garrow and his hapless henchman Harley Blackstone.

Saxton and his beautiful black bride Virginia survive in a dangerous milieu of Confederate espionage, high treason and the siege of Fort Sumter, all brought to the fore by one man… President Abraham Lincoln.

Battlegrounds is the first of four books in the Matari Series. Though historical fiction, this adventure action series uses the period 1854-84 as the stage for seminal events concerning black Americans before, during and after the US Civil War.

Book One has many surprising themes, such as how the Black community in Boston was racist, especially in its Black churches. The church in question opposed the marriage of a rich white man to a poor black undertaker’s daughter. That President Lincoln was a devious, conniving racist before the Civil War started. That Britain, though anti-slavery, was trading arms for cotton and other goods with slave states before the war began – and continued thereafter. That the abolitionist movement in America was divided along racial lines, as was the Congress of the United States.

These and other events in this series are not new. But due to how the figures involved have usually been portrayed, they are controversial and explosive, to say the least.