Novels of Paul Sullivan - Series by Royal Fireworks Press

This is a novel of the American coal industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is told from the point of view of Paddy O'Grady, a 12-year-old working in a Pennsylvania mine in the breaker where boys below the age of 14 sorted through rapidly-moving streams of coal picking out rocks and shale from the anthracite on the way to the rail siding.

Miners and their families came from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Italy. The mine owners allowed the differences of national origin and ethnic rivalries to keep the workers separate and relatively powerless, and the mining towns were divided by ethnicity. Mining families were always poor, and Paddy O’Grady was not unusual in going to work in the breaker at the age of eight. The law said that children under the age of 12 were not allowed to work, but the O’Grady family desperately needed the income Paddy could bring in and documents could be manufactured as needed.

The boys who survived the 12-hour days in the breaker could go down into the mines and earn more money whey they became 14. But the work was dangerous, the overseer harsh, and Paddy had years to go before he could become a miner—an occupation that was killing his father.

Paul Sullivan is a master storyteller, and this is a gripping novel for young people.

This gripping adventure story is set in an unexplored and intact Maya site in Guatemala. For the team of archaeologists it is a rich lode of treasures—but there are the rebels and the army to contend with.

Between the thieves and spies for both sides, it is impossible to know if anyone can be trusted. If they abandon the site, they know the looters certainly will take everything. If they stay in the face of civil war, the army or the rebels might well take their lives.

It is up to archaeologist Walter Davis to decide to stay or go, to judge when the need to know what lay buried there was worth the risk.

Author, Paul Sullivan says his novel "simply shows how foolish war is. The small valley in Guatemala, where the story is set, suffered teh same kind of conflict nine hundred years ago as it did in in the 1980s"

Paul Sullivan is a master storyteller and appeals to older readers and adults alike. Other novels by Paul Sullivan

This is the compelling story of a man alone trying to survive in the Arctic as the weather is closing in.
Jake Quinn could fly an airplane, but he was not a hunter. When his plane developed carburetor trouble, he put down on a frozen river only to see the ice break up and the plane disappear into the water. His thoughts for survival were to keep from freezing and to reach civilization. He had a rifle with two cartridges, a few matches, a parka, and a blanket. He did not have a map or a compass. Soon he was stalked by a large white bear. He knew that his rifle offered him little protection against the bear. He recognized that he was an alien in this frozen land which belonged to the stalking white bear.
He had always admired the bears’ strength and awesome beauty. Although he had seen many bear from the window of his plane, this one was the biggest by far. In this story of man’s place in Nature’s North, the bear is relentless, the man is persistent but humble. In fact, before the “Ghost of the North,” the man was on his best behavior.
Jake is equally careful and respectful of the wolves he runs across.
The special dangers and problems of surviving in the far north become very clear to any reader during the course of the novel.

This is a spectacularly good adventure and psychological story—simple, compelling, clear, and very engaging.

“The wolf’s narrative is so skillfully written that readers easily suspend disbelief....”Booklist goes on to call the novel “An exciting, satisfying, read for that special young adult.”

VOYA says “...good character development...exciting action...the plot itself is well-crafted...effect of talking animals works; readers will become immersed in Amitok’s adventure.”

It was a white man’s gun that killed Kivvik, and the man took the hide from his body. And later it was the wolverine who ate the flesh and broke the bones to suck out the marrow. But they did not take the spirit of Kivvik, the great white wolf.
Kivvik’s spirit avenges and cleanses the land of Ross, who hunts from airplanes for sport, and of the wolverine, the reckless killer. Kivvik’s spirit gives strength and direction to his grandson, Amitok. Amitok, once the runt of his litter, is rewarded for his intellect, curiosity, and obedience to the code of the land and his clan. At one with his spirit, Amitok grows from a bewildered pup into a great white wolf able to follow Kivvik.
It is when Amitok and Kivvik come to interact with the men who inhabit this barren land that their story becomes a Legend of the North.

This is a mighty fable, a major legend of the Inuit that Sullivan’s command of the weight and tempo of precise words orchestrates into epic clarity of inner thoughts and external visuals.
 

Intukk had a vision when he was a boy, and if it had not been for this, the People would not have settled to hunt the land and sea of the place later known as Hewitt Sound. But under the influence of the white man’s greed for hides, the People broke the covenant with nature and the land became empty.
Three quarters of a century later, Matthew Hewitt arrived to find information about an uncle who had disappeared. He had no Arctic experience for the long trek to Hewitt Sound, but he did have the aid of an old Inuit hunter. Together, the two men go to the brink of death as Matthew pieces together the story and comes to understand the mysteries of the land; myth twisted in truth and truth twisted in myth.
The Unforgiving Land is told in a double narrative as the past and present intertwine in a perfectly balanced novel of white man’s greed, the temptations of modern conveniences, Inuit transgressions, and Nature’s ultimate revenge.

This is the third and final novel in Paul Sullivan’s trilogy paying homage to the Arctic, its people, land, weather, and fauna. Sullivan, through his extraordinary talent, draws his readers into his stories to experience the tales as they unfold.
The grandeur of his language and emotion warm us as we stand out in the frozen stillness beside the great white bear, the white wolf, and the Inuit. We come to know the heartbeat of the land that “respects few who challenge it, none of those who do not understand it, and challenges all who enter it.”

“All things are connected. The Earth to the Sun. The Moon to the Earth. Man to the land he walks on. All creatures to the wind, to the sky, to a blade of grass. Each bound by a spirit within. All connected to one hearing, one voice, one breathing. Through the wings of a butterfly a man can hear the earth in motion. He can hear, if he listens.” If he learns to listen. So speaks Masuka, the African.
The Spirit Walker is a haunting novel of the feelings of man and beast, multiple perceptions and stunning imagery. It is told with flashbacks, and from each human’s and an elephant’s point of view. The author deftly crafts a story about the web of nature and mans uneasy fit into it.
An old elephant, more than 50 years, and an honest seven tons, has survived a poacher’s bullet lodged close to his heart, but the wound is slowly killing him. He recalls the family unit of his youth and its bloody slaughter. And the stench of man, one particular man. Now the old one is on the trail of the man who caused him such pain.
Teich is a sweaty, cigar-smoking poacher. He is unkempt, undignified and has no
respect for any living thing. He fears only hippos. He carries a leg injury from the old elephant and is consumed with finding and finally killing him for revenge and for his huge ivory tusks. Young Tebe and his wife Kopela, trapped by economics, work for Teich, but loathe him.
Masuku is a mysterious old man who manipulates the poacher’s physical and emotional weaknesses to bring him into Nature's just pattern.

The Spirit Walker touches the reader’s mind and heart. It is a tribute to Nature and the African Elephant, the largest and most powerful land animal, which Sullivan portrays with incredible insight and beauty