E. Pluribus Unum

“E. Pluribus Unum= “From Many…One”, is my second novel, and is the sequel to its’ predecessor, my first novel, “Why”. “E. Pluribus Unum…(From Many, One)” is an epic story (1861-1876) chronicling the lives of two individuals. One a black man, Jason Ruth, born into a life of perpetual slavery; the other, a white woman, Rebecca Billings, the daughter of Henry Billings, Master of the Rosewood Plantation, born into a pampered life of privilege as a member of the Southern aristocracy. Two people—one black, the other white—whose preordained statuses in life were at diametrically opposite ends of the South’s Antebellum society. Two people with absolutely nothing in common, yet two people whose lives were inexorably linked due to the lust of Rebecca’s father, Henry Billings, for his black slave, Ruth, Jason’s mother. Henry Billings coupling (white master with his black female slave), a common and socially accepted practice in the slave holding South, resulted in the birth of Mandy (Jason and Rebecca’s sister). While Jason and Rebecca are not related by blood, Jason (who was born before his mother Ruth, caught the eye of the white “Massa”) and Rebecca each shared a deep and enduring love for his and her only surviving sibling, their common link, their sister Mandy. The novel tells of Rebecca’s life while raising her child of mixed-blood in the South during the Civil War and during Reconstruction. It tells of Jason’s life as a member of the Massachusetts 54th Infantry Division and his service as a member of the United States Army’s 19 th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers). The novel examines three coexisting 19 th century American Cultures: the recently defeated South’s response to the post-Civil War’s era of Reconstruction; the former black slaves who are attempting to adjust to life as freedmen, and the noble nomadic hunter-gatherer society of the Plains Indians fighting to defend and to maintain their way of life.