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Fading Light: A Beeson Family Novel Book 1
It begins with a choice that wasn't theirs to make.
North Carolina, 1775. Raised a Quaker, Captain Edward Beeson, a patriarch of deep faith, takes up arms for a revolution his conscience condemns. The women of his family are left to carry what he cannot. His mother, Elizabeth, holds the meeting house together. His wife, Ann, holds the family together. And when Edward returns from the battlefield a different man than the one who left, they must find a way to hold him together too.
Fading Light is the story of the American Revolution as the women who lived it knew it.
Rooted in more than twenty years of genealogical research — military records, Quaker meeting minutes, census documents, wills, and family genealogies — this is the true story of a real family. Captain Edward Beeson is a documented Daughters of the American Revolution patriot ancestor and the author's fourth great grandfather. Every Beeson in these pages lived.
Written in honor of America's 250th anniversary, Fading Light is the first book in the Beeson Family Saga of a multigenerational series following one real American family from the Revolution through the Civil War and beyond.
It begins with a choice that wasn't theirs to make.
North Carolina, 1775. Raised a Quaker, Captain Edward Beeson, a patriarch of deep faith, takes up arms for a revolution his conscience condemns. The women of his family are left to carry what he cannot. His mother, Elizabeth, holds the meeting house together. His wife, Ann, holds the family together. And when Edward returns from the battlefield a different man than the one who left, they must find a way to hold him together too.
Fading Light is the story of the American Revolution as the women who lived it knew it.
Rooted in more than twenty years of genealogical research — military records, Quaker meeting minutes, census documents, wills, and family genealogies — this is the true story of a real family. Captain Edward Beeson is a documented Daughters of the American Revolution patriot ancestor and the author's fourth great grandfather. Every Beeson in these pages lived.
Written in honor of America's 250th anniversary, Fading Light is the first book in the Beeson Family Saga of a multigenerational series following one real American family from the Revolution through the Civil War and beyond.
It begins with a choice that wasn't theirs to make.
311 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 25, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 29, 2026
Heartbreaking...devastating...real...redemption...deep real love!
June 12, 2026
3.5 stars
Rural USA, 250 years ago
A worthwhile and largely interesting book which gives readers insight into the American War of Independence, and the inner conflict, due to religious convictions, faced by some rural communities.
The Quaker customs followed by Elizabeth, Benjamin and their family are an intriguing aspect of this novel, especially when war conditions force the community to scrutinise their principles of peace at all costs. The family is divided when son Edward joins the militia with the remainder of the novel focusing primarily on what modern day experts would term his PTSD.
I set the book aside on a few occasions (hence my late review) as I struggled with the confusing military aspects and occasional mentions of Edward’s family, including a sudden and unanticipated reference to a two-year-old son -- which indicated Edward’s apparent, but unrecorded, periods at home.
Although dates are still sometimes out of sync and/or significant events are not mentioned, the latter half of the narrative is far more reader-friendly, describing a united couple: Edward, a man rooted in the land, and Ann, a woman with strong religious principles who supports her husband in his search for sustainability. Steadfast frontier parents who raise several sons with integrity and stoicism, often using enigmatic or even silent conversations to communicate, with covert demonstrations of affection which are nevertheless correctly interpreted as deep familial love.
I received a free copy of this book via StoryOrigin and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Rural USA, 250 years ago
A worthwhile and largely interesting book which gives readers insight into the American War of Independence, and the inner conflict, due to religious convictions, faced by some rural communities.
The Quaker customs followed by Elizabeth, Benjamin and their family are an intriguing aspect of this novel, especially when war conditions force the community to scrutinise their principles of peace at all costs. The family is divided when son Edward joins the militia with the remainder of the novel focusing primarily on what modern day experts would term his PTSD.
I set the book aside on a few occasions (hence my late review) as I struggled with the confusing military aspects and occasional mentions of Edward’s family, including a sudden and unanticipated reference to a two-year-old son -- which indicated Edward’s apparent, but unrecorded, periods at home.
Although dates are still sometimes out of sync and/or significant events are not mentioned, the latter half of the narrative is far more reader-friendly, describing a united couple: Edward, a man rooted in the land, and Ann, a woman with strong religious principles who supports her husband in his search for sustainability. Steadfast frontier parents who raise several sons with integrity and stoicism, often using enigmatic or even silent conversations to communicate, with covert demonstrations of affection which are nevertheless correctly interpreted as deep familial love.
I received a free copy of this book via StoryOrigin and am voluntarily leaving a review.
August 3, 2026
I have heard of Quakers, however I admit I knew nothing about them. This was incredibly insightful. I like how the author really showed Edward's struggle with the war and its affects long after the war is over.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews