Gordon Saunders
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America
Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance, Young Adult (YA), Fantasy
Narnia, Asteroid B-612, Middle Earth, Earthsea, and earth. I’ve spent a lot of time in each of these places. Plus a few more. They’re all real, you know, just real in different ways. But there is a Reality that is more important than them all, and I’ve gotten to know Him, too. I’ve been to dozens of countries on earth (on every continent except Antartica) and He has been there. He’s been in many of the other places, too, the places you can only get to through stories. But I’ve seen, in many places, that who He is has gotten bumbled up. So I wanted to create a place where He could be seen for who He really is. The place turned out to be green - at least the sky - and very hard. I used to teach Latin and the word for green, in Latin, started with ‘ver.’ The word for hard started with ‘dura.’ So I decided to put them together to name my place: Verdura. I learned later that the word ‘verdura,’ in Spanish means ‘vegetables.’ I hope the Verdurans won’t hold it against me that they live on vegetables. And I hope Spanish-speakers will understand that I didn’t mean to borrow their word for vegetables and will, maybe, see their way to believing Verdura to be a hard, green planet. Where Reality lives. I’m blessed with living with a wife who’s stayed with me for fifty years, and with three kids, six grandkids, and the memory of a cat and a dog who, no matter what anyone says, have both gone on to heaven. We’re pretty close to heaven, here in Colorado, and I hope you’ll get here someday. Then maybe we could go to some of those other places - the ones in stories - together.
Gordon Saunders' books
Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult (YA)
Age Groups: 8-11, 12-15, 16-18, 18+
How can you prove your father’s not a deserter when you don’t know where he is and he hasn’t communicated in months? What do you do when you’re fogged in on the waters of Chesapeake Bay and your sole companion doesn’t even speak English? Lewis Elliot and his mother, Stella, are forced to flee their Baltimore home for the modest farm of their cousins in Gloucester County, Virginia. They arrive just as the feared Lord Cornwallis and the hated Colonel Banastre Carleton take up residence in Gloucester Point and across the York River in Yorktown. The war heats up as Cornwallis fortifies Yorktown and Carleton begins foraging raids in Gloucester County. Then, while Lewis and his cousins, Lloyd and Tetty, are off to Gloucester Courthouse to try to sell enough tobacco to provide for the family, Carleton raids the farm and Stella receives a life-threatening injury. Through battle, betrayal, unexpected...
Genres: Young Adult (YA), Fantasy
Formats: E-Book, Paperback, Hardback
Age Groups: 8-11, 12-15, 16-18, 18+
Kentucky, 1836. Joshua and Marie were only going to tour Mammoth Cave. Amanda and her Daddy’s slave, Steven, were only going for a picnic in the cave. Only the way out didn’t lead out. It led in. In to another world where they were desperately needed to save the lives of dozens of women and children. But it wasn’t what they thought. It wasn’t against an army. The army only wanted them to fight… something else. Something worse. Something worse than their worst nightmares. Will they defeat it? Can it even be defeated? Will the rocks cry out to help them? And where is that glowing bird, the one they saw killed, the one who lit up the sky not long after? The only one who can get them back home. Will he come? Join Joshua, Marie, Amanda and Steven in their first Verduran adventure. Or maybe their last adventure....