Rebel Correspondent by Steve Procko | Spotlight
A book blog tour from iRead Book Tours.
Thank you to the author, publisher, & Lauren at iRead for providing me the information for this tour. 
Book Details
Rebel Correspondent by Steve Procko Published by Independent on September 6, 2021
Genres: Non-fiction, Biography
Format: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 365
Rebel Correspondent is the true story of a young man who joined the Confederate Army days after his eighteenth birthday and served bravely until the war ended. Wounded twice, he emerged a changed person. But he wasn't just a returning veteran; he was also a writer.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Arba F. Shaw was a fifty-seven-year-old farmer. On a chilly December day in 1901, he put pen to paper to write his memories of being a Rebel Private in the 4th Georgia Cavalry (Avery), C.S.A. He completed writing his account in February 1902. His local newspaper, the Walker County Messenger, in Lafayette, Georgia, published his account in more than fifty articles from 1901 to 1903.
Then it was all but forgotten. Until Now.
Rebel Correspondent presents Arba F. Shaw's account word-for-word, as first published in the Walker County Messenger almost 120 years ago. Procko annotates Shaw's account with in-depth research, verifying it and uncovering the back story of his life and the lives of his Rebel comrades. Procko's research offers a historical perspective on the many places and events Shaw so richly described.
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Purchase Links for Rebel Correspondent
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Trailer for Rebel Correspondent
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About Steve Procko
Steve Procko never thought of himself as a Confederate history buff, let alone a biographer. He does love history; however, he particularly loves learning about the small, everyday events in the lives of little known people and the small towns they lived in.
A documentarian and photographer, Steve was sleuthing for stories for a series he has developed—the Emmy-nominated video series “There’s History Around Every Bend” currently available on YouTube https://bit.ly/3dl8gr2 —when he came across the writings of Private Arba F. Shaw.
The down-to-earth accounts of the everyday life of a lowly private struggling to survive one of the greatest events in American history fascinated Steve. As he read the series of articles, mostly unread since they were published in a small, North Georgia newspaper between 1901 and 1903, he began to realize that this was a remarkable cache of history.
A native of Florida, Steve, along with his wife, Lauren, and their dog, Rigby, splits his time between a mountain log cabin nestled next to Stanley Creek near the town of Blue Ridge, Georgia, and a home in Ocala, Florida.
He opened a commercial film production company— Steve Procko Productions, LLC—in 1984. His Emmy award-winning financial literacy program entitled “Talkin’ Money Minutes” is available on more than 100 public television stations nationwide. His company has also won three additional Emmys as well as several Addy Awards, Telly Awards, and two Promax awards.
When he’s not behind a video camera or researching the archives for his next documentary or book, Steve explores remote areas throughout the United States and Canada as a fine art photographer. His work has been displayed at The Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and The Museum of Art in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, as well as featured in various solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States.
Steve’s second book, Captured Liberty, will be published in 2022. He also plans to develop documentaries about Rebel Correspondent and Captured Liberty.
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Author Interview
What inspired you to write your first book?
Rebel Correspondent is my first book – I was inspired by just how tough the average soldier in the Civil War had it. Strip away the politics. This book is not about why the Civil War occurred. It was about survival – they were just very young men trying to survive. Even their officers were ridiculously young.
Arba had to forage for food to feed himself and his horse almost daily. The average soldier was subjected to exposure and their most serious enemy was disease. The number one killer was rubella.
It was also a project to keep myself occupied during the COVID pandemic.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
How tough they had it, and how young they were. I can’t even imagine an 18-year-old today doing what Arba F. Shaw and his comrades did and surviving it.
How do you go about researching a book like Rebel Correspondent?
With Rebel Correspondent, I had fifty-five articles published between 1901 and 1903. The manuscript was written by Arba F. Shaw from December 1901 through February 1902. When he was done, he had written 40,000 words. My research was to take everything he had written and find out the back story on everything.
Also, how accurate was his memory more than 35 years after the war? Well, it turns out he was VERY accurate. In fact, it was quite remarkable to find the details and places he mentioned and research the history behind it, What became of these folks after the war ended?
Do you write every day?
Once I start a project I write most every day. I spent several months researching the book before I began to write it. Once I started to write it, I moved pretty quickly on the first half. Then I went back and dug deeper in the research on a few things.
I had the book almost complete in November 2020 then I took a break and did not pick it up again to finish the last two chapters until January 2021. Again, I dug back through the second half of what I had written and researched some things a little more.
In your book’s back cover you mention a man wearing a red sash – what is that about?
Finding the specific details of this came in January 2021 as I researched the second half of the book further.
Arba wrote many times over the years about being wounded in Campbellsville, TN on September 5, 1864. They were just thirty feet apart, dueling on horseback. The Yankee was wearing a red sash. Arba got off four shots—he thought his last shot hit the man. His fellow soldiers would later recall that someone got him. Arba’s new horse fell dead in the field, and the wounds to Arba’s right arm bled profusely. Red blood seeped all over his right side—deep red like the color of the Yankee’s sash.
Back cover of Rebel Correspondent and the man with the red sash
In his lifetime Arba never knew what became of his adversary. He never knew the man’s name. He only knew: “I did my shooting at a man that had on a red sash.” It was like from the movie and TV series The Fugitive – looking for the “one-armed man”
I was able to find a diary written by a Union soldier in the 1st Tennessee Cavalry that allowed me to determine the name of the man in the red sash. He was a Union sergeant on horseback who seriously wounded Arba as Arba, who was also on horseback, fired back at him. The sergeant was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and had joined the Union army. He and Arba grew up 125 miles from each other. They were both the same age, just 20-years-old.
Where did you write this book?
I have a log cabin on Stanley Creek in the North Georgia mountains. Which was the perfect place to hunker down during COVID and do some serious research. I have a desk with a finished top made from locally harvested cherry wood in a loft with a window looking out into a forest of trees and the sound of the creek in the background. The cabin has a tin roof and there is nothing better than sitting in the loft, typing away as it rains outside, creating a hypnotic sound on the tin roof a few feet above my desk.
Giveaway!
Enter to win a copy of Rebel Correspondent signed by the author, Rebel Correspondent Bookmark, $10 Amazon Gift Card, and one-of-a-kind vintage CDV (cart-de-visit) photograph (5 winners / USA only) (ends Sep 21)
THE REBEL CORRESPONDENT Book Tour Giveaway
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Purchase Rebel Correspondent online from a local book store.
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Easy Amazon Links
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Sounds very interesting