The Last Stand - Roche, Brien A.

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Résumé :
July 19, 1919, was a steamy day in Washington, D.C. The Klan was in town, promoting white supremacy and Prohibition. Their rural foothold was based upon the credo of not mixing the races; that alcohol would undo the American family; that the only way to hold on to what you got is to make sure that nobody passes you by in the social order, including non-whites, foreigners and non-Protestants. The three Custer brothers had returned from Northern France, having fought there as American Stormtroopers. They had adopted the German Stormtrooper technique of quick and vicious nighttime raids to disrupt the enemy. These Black warriors were prepared to employ those same tactics to defend their home. Defend they did. They beat back the white mob. They used their marksmanship skills not to kill but to wound and deter.The Custer brothers didn't know that German Stormtroopers had entered the United States to continue wreaking havoc and extracting vengeance against the men they felt had misled Germany into an armistice, surrender and now reparations. To aid their mission, they injected themselves into the white mob. The Custer brothers, in conjunction with Lee Ann Custer, their white sister, decided to fight back. Fight they did.

Biographie:
Through my service in the Marine Corps, four years as a patrol officer with the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and 45 years as a trial lawyer in the Washington, D.C. area, I have been around the barn. Since being admitted to the practice of law in Virginia in 1976, I have tried more than 300 jury cases and handled thousands of other cases of every conceivable type. In 1985, I became a partner with the firm of Johnson & Roche in McLean, Virginia. My practice has been principally litigation with a focus on tort litigation along with substantial involvement in commercial litigation, real estate litigation and domestic relations litigation.My interest in writing fiction ties in with my interest in the study of history. The main character in the Prohibition series is not a historical character but he acts as part of some historical events including the race riot of July 19, 1919 in Washington, D.C. Most of the other events are purely fictional but many of the characters of course are not. The existence of the Liberator boats is fact-based as these watercrafts were constructed as part of the U.S. war effort in Europe. The integration of fact and fiction is always tricky but hopefully these novels instill some further interest in the reader in this historical era and in further historical exploration.