Local author earns prize with Christian adventure book

When the 2020 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalists and winners were announced, local author Harry James Fox of Sonoma Ranch garnered first place for his novel, “A Fire in the West,” in the religion category. He co-authored the book with an accomplished author from Australia, Lucia Mudgway.

“I started writing on it a long time ago,” Fox said. “It turned too big for one volume and became a trilogy.”

“A Fire in the West” is the third and last book in the Stonegate series. The three books comprise tales of a future New Mexico and Colorado a century after a virus pandemic caused a collapse of civilization. 

“These books are often called ‘fantasy’ but are really an imagined future history that looks very much like the distant past,” Fox said.  “It is somewhat ironic that we are receiving this award in the midst of a real pandemic, differing only in degree from the fictional one.”

Looking to write about an individual with a modern world view who was placed into a violent cultural setting which was contrary to all his values, Fox considered time travel, science fiction and historical fiction before settling on simply fiction set in the future.

“In the first book, the main character, Don, grows up immersed in the past,” Fox said. “He read writings of the past, which is our current world.”

In the story, Don meets a girl who gets captured by raiders, and he goes to rescue her and finds himself in the middle of a war. In the second book, he manages to be a warrior transitioning from being bookish to be a fighter and leader. In the end, he beats back the forces of evil.

“A Fire in the West” takes place a generation later. Fox said it is another coming of age story, about a boy and a girl who are cousins.

“Some of the characters have a Christian world view,” he said. “The young man is struggling with his faith and realizes what he has been searching for is God. It’s a major part of the story.”

Fox, who was raised on a ranch in Colorado, said he draws on his love of Colorado and New Mexico landscapes for his books.

“In the end, a big element is horses,” he said. “And the people travel through landscapes of Colorado and New Mexico. People have told me the landscape is almost a character in the book. I had fun with it, imagining how it would look in a future time.

The book is available on Amazon in paperback, as an audiobook and on Kindle as an eBook.