The Refused

Paris! 1861, City of light, art, scandal and great expectations, where extreme wealth rubs against raging poverty, with insurrection roiling beneath the surface.
In the United States, the war of 1861-65 destroys families and communities. Three survivors decide to leave behind the ruins of their former lives. Union cavalryman and aspiring artist Jack Volant, a survivor of Gettysburg, sails to Paris to pursue his artistic vision. Charlotte Stuart, herself a talented sculptress, and her half-brother Jerome turn their backs on a scorched plantation and intractable prejudice.
Charlotte becomes a favorite of Empress Eugenie, wife of Emperor Louie Napoleon and a renowned patron of artists, while Jerome joins forces with revolutionaries. Eventually, Charlotte is able to introduce Jack to Les Refusés-the French Impressionists whose avant garde styles are deemed unacceptable by French jurists. For a little while, Jack is able to forget the horrors of war, painting alongside Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Degas, and Manet. Elsewhere in the city, Jack's disreputable brother Marcel profits from the sale of Egyptian artifacts of dubious origin.
But in 1870, everything changes. A spirit of revolution sweeps through the city like a wild fire, and the disastrous Franco-Prussian war reduces Paris to a city under siege where starvation rules.
"Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written, peopled with paramours, protesters, artists and assassins.The chief appeal of this work is the theme of the arts of peace being practiced against the background of insurrection and war: creation versus destruction, progress versus regression, the nobler motives of man opposed to the baser ones. Amongst the terror, there is redemption. This is a page-turner that will keep you reading long into the night." -John Danielski, author of the Napoleonic era Pennywhistle novels.

James Boschert grew up in the then colony of Malaya in the early fifties. He learned first hand about terrorism while there as the Communist insurgency was in full swing. His school was burnt down and the family, while traveling, narrowly survived an ambush, saved by a Gurkha patrol, which drove off the insurgents.
He went on to join the British army serving in remote places like Borneo and Oman. Later he spent five years in Iran before the revolution, where he played polo with the Iranian Army, developed a passion for the remote Assassin castles found in the high mountains to the north, and learned to understand and speak the Farsi language.
Escaping Iran during the revolution, he went on to become an engineer and now lives in Arizona on a small ranch with his family and animals