James Alexander Thom Books in Order

This brief early collection captures Thom before his historical fiction breakthrough. Its compact pieces show the observational habits of a working journalist and storyteller rather than the sweep of his later novels.

Set around the rain-soaked, crash-marred 1973 Indianapolis 500, this early novel follows a web of spectators whose lives collide at the Speedway. The result is a sharp look at crowds, violence, and voyeurism.

George Rogers Clark leads a small Revolutionary force west from Virginia to challenge British power between the Ohio and Mississippi. Thom turns a neglected campaign into a story of ambition, endurance, and betrayal.

Pregnant Mary Ingles is taken captive after a Shawnee raid on Draper's Meadow in 1755. Refusing to surrender her hope of home, she escapes and follows the river through a brutal wilderness journey.

The Clark family saga follows Ann and John Clark and their children through Revolution, frontier settlement, and the Lewis and Clark expedition. It links family life to the risky work of building a young nation.

Former Marine Scotty Montgomery becomes an anti-war journalist, but old hatred follows him from the Midwest to the Middle East. His clash with bully turned arms dealer Billy Bob Skaggs tests his ideals and anger.

This fictional life of Tecumseh follows the Shawnee leader from his birth under a comet to his campaign for a Native confederacy. The novel centers his fight to defend land, people, and identity.

Thom imagines Welsh prince Madoc crossing the Atlantic in the twelfth century and founding a colony in a strange new land. Across generations, his descendants merge with Native peoples and legend.

Paired with Darryl L. Jones's photographs, Thom's essays linger over southern Indiana's hill country, its woods, farms, roads, and people. It is nonfiction about landscape, memory, rootedness, and home.

After young Frances Slocum is taken from her Quaker family during the Revolutionary War, she grows into Maconakwa among the Miami. Years later, her birth family returns, forcing her to face where she belongs.

George Drouillard, a gifted hunter and interpreter of Shawnee and French heritage, joins Lewis and Clark's expedition. Through his eyes, the journey becomes both adventure and warning about the changes coming west.

Nonhelema, the Shawnee Women's Peace Chief, tries to protect her people as Virginia settlers and Revolutionary forces push toward their homeland. When peace fails, she must fight, negotiate, and endure betrayals from both sides.

During the Mexican-American War, Irish immigrant John Riley deserts U.S. ranks and helps form the San Patricios. Told from both sides, the novel asks what loyalty means when faith, abuse, and conquest collide.

Thom's hands-on guide shows writers how to research archives, places, speech, and material culture, then shape those facts into believable fiction without losing the pull of story.

One-armed correspondent Paddy Quinn boards the overcrowded Sultana with his new bride after the Civil War. When the steamboat explodes on the Mississippi, his final assignment becomes a desperate fight to survive.

Thom explains how to turn historical research into scenes that feel alive. This guide covers archives, fieldwork, voice, setting, and the tricky balance between documented fact and invented story.