About Harold Titus and Crossing the River

 

Raised most of my childhood in Pasadena, CA, I graduated from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in history. I spent 2 years in the army prior to the Vietnam War. I am a retired eighth grade English and American history teacher, having taught 31 years in Orinda, CA. I enjoyed coaching many of my school's boys and girls sports teams. Basketball was my favorite sport. My wife and I have lived the past 16 years on the Oregon coast. In late 2011 I took great pleasure in giving my children and grandchildren copies of my novel, a legacy of sorts, an expression of who I am, a testament of what can be achieved by hard work.

 

 

Crossing the River

Standing on Lexington’s town common, humbled by the veneration of hundreds of militiamen, conceding that he had instructed them, encouraged them, in the end incited them, acknowledging that he, with others, had brought them to the river that could now be called revolution, Doctor Joseph Warren gives full credit to whom it is due.  They, not he, knowing fully well the danger, had attacked the master.  Standing at the river’s edge, they, of their own volition, had crossed over.

 

Joseph Warren is but one of Crossing the River’s many historical figures that bring to life General Thomas Gage’s failed attempt April 19, 1775, to seize and destroy military stores stockpiled at Concord by Massachusetts’s Provincial Congress.  Characters of high and ordinary station, choosing to or forced to participate, must confront their worst fears.  Revealing the internal conflicts, hubris, stupidity, viciousness, valor, resiliency, and empathy of many of the day’s participants, Crossing the River is both a study of man experiencing intense conflict and the varied outcomes of high-risk decision-taking. 

 

The novel’s title is a metaphor for such decision-taking, be it Massachusetts militiamen seeking greater independence from Great Britain, General Gage’s attempted seizure of the provincial arsenal, two junior British officers’ risk-taking to earn quick promotion, an Acton schoolmaster’s compulsion to avenge the death of his dear friend and neighbor, a Lincoln youth’s attempted atonement for cowardice, a Lexington resident’s impulse to assist a redcoat deserter while he tries to resolve his neighbors’ and family’s low regard of him, or a British soldier/spy’s desire to rise above his station. 

 

AboutCrossing the River