HOME LIGHT BURNING
A Novel Based on Actual Facts and Events
By Jim H. Ainsworth
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Lev and Hy Rivers have been taught by their Choctaw grandmother that signs portend good and evil and that birds, animals, and the wind speak to us. One brother believes—one does not. When Lev is shot and left for dead, Hy finds him and carries him toward Texas and home. Olivia Brand, a doctor’s daughter, tends Lev’s wound inside a tavern owned by a man named Filson. The brothers flee when Filson accuses them of horse theft and murder. Olivia flees with them and Lev falls in love with her, but cannot accept her past with Filson, a man surrounded by evil signs.

At war’s end, officers warn Lev and Hy that the rivers of Texas will run red with the blood of former Confederates. The specter of defeat hangs heavy on the returning soldiers, and violence strikes before they reach home. It continues to stalk them as they try to piece together shattered former lives. The brothers bear the burden—until violence visits their families. Then they seek vengeance.

Softcover: 6 X 9
ISBN: 978-0-86534-745-8
362 pp., $24.95

Home Light Burning
Jim H. Ainsworth

Jim Ainsworth is a master story- teller. He is cut from the "old rock", the stone of Kelton and Dobie. He is able to weave a story that can transport the reader to a different time and place.
Home Light Burning is a well-written page-turner with crisp prose and dialogue that flows like a spring from a limestone bluff. The plot and pace never bog down.

The main characters, Hy and Lev Rivers, from whom the author is a direct descendant, are passionate but imperfect. They struggle through the incredibly difficult and unjust days of Reconstruction in Texas. The War of Northern Aggression has left them hard, changed men, but unprepared them for the depths of human duplicity and hatred that marked the post-war period in Texas. The love of family, sheer determination and pure luck sustain them in their trials.

Home Light Burning is an excellent novel. This book serves as a prequel to The Rivers Trilogy of novels, an exquisite three volume series also written by Jim Ainsworth. All four books will one day earn their place among the classics of truly Texan literature.

Dr. Stephen L. Turner, author, Westward Quest Series
December 17, 2009

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