Hello, reader,
If you are here, perhaps you have read Arcturus and want to know more about the story behind the book by getting to know its writer. Here is how Arcturus came about.
At age 17, while still in high school, I tried to join the Army. A buddy and I rode the bus to Memphis, took the tests, and imagined we were quite the adventurers already. Stunned and dismayed, I never learned why the Army rejected me for military service. I have finally decided that the young, examining, Army Captain, doctor looked at me and took it upon himself not to send the scrawny kid he saw before him to die in Viet Nam.
Temporarily frustrated but still determined to be a soldier, I finished high school, started college, joined ROTC, trained as a Ranger, and applied for a commission as an Infantry officer. I joined the Army as a Second Lieutenant the day I graduated from college in 1973, commissioned with the gold bar rank insignia my father wore as an Air Force officer 30 years earlier. I achieved my dream: I joined the Infantry, assigned to the famed 101st Airborne Division.
However, and much to my surprise, the war I had grown up with during the ‘60s—the Viet Nam War—wound down and somehow ended before I finally made it into the Army. All dressed up with no place to go!
I spent four years, made Captain, and trained with the 101st Airborne Division as it continued to improve its helicopter-borne, “Air Assault” tactics. I was honored to be assigned to the 1st Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment—the "Currahee" regiment you may have seen more about in the production of "Band of Brothers." I met fine soldiers, spent many nights in the field training with them, and remain grateful for the opportunity to serve in such a unit. Still, I found myself somewhere never expected: in the peacetime Army. Older soldiers will tell you—in somewhat different words—that the peacetime military is no place to be. Perhaps I was immature and shortsighted, and I respect those more farsighted soldiers who stayed in, endured those years, and stood by until their country needed them, but I resigned at the end of my four years and re-entered civilian life in 1977 unsure of just what to do. I arranged for graduate school and pondered how to spend the summer.
I had read newspaper accounts of yachts lost to drug dealers. With time to kill, I briefly entertained signing on as a bodyguard on yachts off the Florida coast before university coursework began. Instead, I traveled the country, then studied in graduate school, and later worked as a manufacturing plant manager. I charted a new course, completed law school, and settled down in Knoxville to practice law. My wife and I raised and taught our four children.
The Islamic terrorist attacks on Americans, culminating on 9-11-2001, burned new passion into the vision of writing Arcturus. The Islamic world is in civil war. The stakes are the souls of millions of Muslims. The jihadists are determined to impose their authoritarian, legalistic religion on the rest of the Muslim world—and then on us. We—in the West—are unwillingly but inescapably—caught up in the overflow of Islam's civil war. You are at war, whether you want to acknowledge this terrible fact or not. Arcturus thrusts upon you this grim reality.
If you picked up Arcturus as an easy beach-read, well, I hope you adapt and “get into” the story. It's going to be deeper, more involved, and more profound than the usual publishing-house paperback. Arcturus tells the tale of one clash in this epic, thousand-year-old battle between two alien worlds. However, it accomplishes this through the gritty adventures of one soldier-of-fortune and patriot, Jack McDonald. By telling his tale, through his eyes, Arcturus celebrates and honors those who stand watch as our guardians. I hope Arcturus challenges you as a reader and as an American—all while you thrill to the tale.
Arcturus is hardly politically correct. If it offends your presumptions and affronts your politics, don't worry. There are plenty of novels out there espousing your views. I ask that you open your heart anyway to the young men and women who walk “The Road to Come What May” in the service of their country, and that you respect the older men and women who have dedicated their lives to the United States—in your defense and on your behalf. They believe at the core of their soul that America is worth fighting for. They are right.
God save these United States,
M. J. Mollenhour