Book Details:

Book Title: Burton Blake by Robert Tucker
Category: Adult Fiction, 518 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing
Release date: 1/06/2019
Tour dates: May 27 to June 28, 2019
Content Rating: G (Depictions of violence are minimal. No bad language, religious expletives, sex scenes, drug use or underage drinking.)

Book Description:

In this sequel to the well-received The Revolutionist, the American journey of three generations locks the neophyte company president, Burton Blake, in a vicious struggle with corporate intrigue, financial greed, and social corruption. Born to a taxi dancer at the beginning of the Second World War, Burton’s father, Elias Blake, never knows his natural father, who is killed in the South Pacific. He is raised by his mother and stepfather from her second marriage who makes his fortune during the post-war real estate boom of the ’50s. Their untimely death by his business partner leaves the boy Elias in the guardianship of his mother’s best friend and her marine vet husband who introduces him to the macho culture of guns and hunting.

Elias’s youth is influenced by the adult world’s drive for personal material gain. Over the next decades, he expands his parents’ original real estate empire into the diversified multi-divisional, multi-national corporation that he leaves to his son, Burton. Upon his forced return from traveling and working with oppressed third world people, Burton learns increasingly more about the true nature of his deceased father as he undertakes the challenges of leading the company in a new direction.

Robert Tucker

Author Interview

Q: The reader is drawn into your novels from the first page because of the high tension and sense of immediacy of the situation. Do you plan this? Are you a ‘pantser’ or a ‘plotter’ when you write?

A: I’m a combination of both. The lives of characters tend to influence the direction of the plot rather than imposing the plot on them. I place the characters into situations, conflicts, and events and see and experience their world through their eyes. For me, writing is a process of discovery.

Establishing dramatic conflict at the opening of the book is planned. I typically start with characters talking to each other or with an inner monologue or thought exposition, then integrate the dramatic elements of scenes, action, and milieu around them.

Q: Do you think these compelling stories could take place in the context of modern times? Why or why not?

A: I think these stories are manifested in different societies and cultures every day. Throughout the world and locally all around us, people are struggling against tyranny and injustice to have good meaningful lives in ways that matter to them. Diversity, greed, and social and political conflicts are realities of life.

Q: Integrity is a powerful recurring theme in your novels. Which of the characters in The Revolutionist and in Burton Blake do you feel demonstrate this quality the best?

A: The protagonist, Julie Josephson, influenced by her parents, Olaf and Ingrid Josephson, her brother, Newt, Matias and Kurt Bauman, industrialists, Sophie Augusta Rose, an opera diva, Horst Holtzman, a political organizer and his son, Conrad, Jean Guenoc, a family friend and protector, Bernard Hutchins, an African American lawyer,

In Burton Blake, the protagonist, Burton Blake, his paternal grandmother, Kristina Hofstader, his mother, Dorothy, Robert Ostraich, a journalist, Abena Ekwensi, a Red Cross director in South Africa, a Native American guide in Alaska, Noah Kaganuk, medical doctor with Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Elizabeth (Lizzie) Dawson.

Q: What did you know about 20^th century history before you began writing The Revolutionist and Burton Blake?

A: What I studied in college history courses, especially about the relationship and influence of the arts, literature, music, and society. In addition, my personal life experiences since I was born during World War II.

Q: Which of the many “hats” that you’ve worn during your professional career did you enjoy wearing the most?

A: Business and management consultant, which provided opportunities to meet and work with many different people in a wide range of industries to the extent I felt more like a social anthropologist than a consultant.

Q: Have any other writers of historical fiction influenced you?

A: E. L. Doctorow and Amor Towles. The last great book I’ve read is A Gentleman In Moscow.

Q; What novels are you planning for the future for readers to enjoy?

A: Tell-Tale Publishing and its affiliate, Wise Words Publishing will be bringing out two future literary novels under contract for publication, Sidewalk and A Seed of Grain. Other WW II and mid-century historical novels are also in the publishing pipeline.

On the urban fantasy side, four novels of the Black Spiral series are contracted for publication. The Funnies, an allegorical fantasy satire is also contracted for publication. I like to work concurrently in different genres.

Spread the love

Tweet