Sunday, February 26, 2012

STONE MOUNTAIN: THE GRANITE SENTINEL

 

HERALDED CIVIL WAR NOVEL

     AVAILABLE AS e-BOOK

 

By Doc Lawrence

 


DR. GEORGE COLETTI

Noted author Dr. George D. N. Coletti shared some very exciting news. His masterpiece, Stone Mountain: The Granite Sentinel, is available from many eBook retailers and this opens up a world of enjoyment for those who love a story brilliantly told about one of the most tumultuous periods in America’s history. Coletti’s exciting 796 page historical novel of the Old South is a well-documented fictional account of life before and during the Civil War, and follows the lives of the Jernigan family and their friends as they face life, death, love and war. 


George Coletti, whose own life is a worthy story, lives and works in the historic village of Stone Mountain, and his contributions to the city’s cultural heritage are legendary. General Sherman’s March to the Sea actually began near Coletti’s home and it was largely through Coletti’s efforts that a monument was dedicated last year commemorating what history calls “Sherman’s Neckties,” a destruction of railroad tracks that crippled the South’s ability to supply food and soldiers during the final year of the Civil War

Dr. Coletti’s monumental book is an eye-opener, awakening me to how little I knew about my ancestors. Prompted by these brilliantly told stories, I began visiting many of the places described in the book. The Andrew Johnson cemetery, holding the remains of a Stone Mountain founding family, the Stone Mountain Cemetery with the mass graves in the Confederate section, an uncomfortable experience as you think of the wartime tragedy leading to such impersonal burial, knowing how their surviving families likely never knew what happened to them.

Grown men make war and everyone somehow loses something, a life, a few years of youth, a healthy body or hope. There are magnificent heroes in The Granite Sentinel to be sure, but the overriding sentiment is that war is senseless, attacking the core of our collective humanity. That's not to take anything away from the brave soldiers who gave their lives-my own family shares a similar heritage-but more a personal lament that any of God's children had to die unnaturally.

It takes a mighty effort to bring a reader's interest back to the events of long ago, but Coletti is equal to the Herculean task. The characters seem to leap from the pages grasping for a heartstring. There is a message: "Never forget us."

All the elements of greatness are drawn together in The Granite Sentinel: romance and love, loyalty and duty, chivalry and generosity, and most of all, honor. Reading the debate between two of the South's finest statesmen-orators, Alexander Stephens and Robert Toombs during Georgia's Secession Convention in 1861, is a stunning example of the remarkable power of language, history, law and love of place. Two men destined to lead the Confederacy, one as Vice President, the other as Secretary of State. One opposed to Secession, the other in favor. Both were close friends and shared a love for the South that transcended differences.

That's just one of the powerful lessons Coletti leaves us. The Granite Sentinel is a profoundly important book that readers throughout the world can now enjoy.

The eBook retailers include:

Apple (Bookstore for iPad)
Amazon (for Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (for NOOK)
Reader Store (For Sony Reader)
Kobo
Copia
Gardners
Baker & Taylor
eBookPie

The range of access is staggering: 16 languages and 200 countries.

No comments:

Post a Comment