Local Author Book Festival

Henry Brinton will offer his novel “War Bug” in this festival of local authors representing a diverse array of genres suitable for all ages. The main goal of the Local Author Book Festival is to create a space for local authors to interact with community members. Copies of “War Bug” will be available for sale, $25 per copy, with all proceeds supporting a youth camp in Honduras.

“War Bug” explores the question: What hope do we have for the healing of our communities, shattered by a global pandemic and a toxic political environment? The book opens a window on the riverfront town of Occoquan, Virginia, and offers glimpses of social upheaval through chapters that alternate between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.

In 1862, Quaker resident Ann Bagley fears that her sons will abandon their pacifism and join the newly established Confederate army. Troops march through the town and shots are fired, enflaming secessionists and Unionists alike. Many pledge their support to the South and send their sons to fight, while others favor the North and take stands as abolitionists.

In 2022, Harley Camden, the pastor of struggling Riverside Methodist Church, fears that civil war will return to Occoquan. Facing cultural and political polarization, he tries to care for his congregation and keep the peace, even as he lends a hand in the archaeological dig of a Quaker house with a mysterious grave. But when people begin to die in acts of brutal violence, he encounters an evil that is deeper than history and more deadly than partisan strife.