Rebel King: Bannok Burn, Book Three - Hardcover

“Splendid! Wonderful!! Electrifying!!! The battle scene is a thriller. You know the outcome, but you will read it eagerly and find yourself caught up in the battle as if you were there on horseback with de Brus. Some of the best dialogue I’ve ever read is between the book’s undermanned heroes and those between the dreaded villains. By far Rebel King, Book III, Bannok Burn is the best of the [authors’] three volumes on Robert de Brus, and the first two are page turners in their own right! The battle is over but the story is not. Stay tuned.-Frank R. Shaw The Family Tree on www.electricscotland.com Just finished reading the book. How exciting!! I was in the midst of the battle and couldn’t go to sleep until it was done! I felt as though I was there, in the middle of the fighting. My heart was pounding with every blow. Most lucid narrative of this famous battle I’ve ever read... anywhere. Robert D. Lockwood, KTJ, FSA Scot Virginia Commissioner, Clan Stewart Society in America By 1314, Robert the Brus has waged a guerilla-style war for eight long years to regain Scotland’s independence from England. During that time he recaptured Scottish castles, one by one, to make the land inhospitable to the English invaders. His brother agreed to a treaty that will remove Stirling Castle from English control with neither siege nor battle... unless the English king relieves the fortress by June 24th.Robert’s hand is dealt. He must meet the English king, Edward II, and his tremendous might on a battlefield south of the citadel, and he knows the winner will take all of Scotland, not just Castle Stirling. In mid-June, King Edward starts the trek north. He has culled knights from among Europe’s finest and hired them to fight for him with promises of Scottish lands and titles and great wealth... once the battle is won. Included in his twenty-mile-long train are 22,500 trained men and untold tonnage of supplies and arms. Robert, King of Scots, and his ragtag army of fewer than 6,000 men are the only obstacle in the way of the English king’s overwhelming force and sheer determination to enslave the Scots. Meeting on a field of unripe wheat beside a stream called Bannok Burn, the two kings and their armies decide the fates of the generations then standing and their children yet unborn.

Charles Randolph Bruce was born and raised in the highlands of present-day southern West Virginia, where his Scottish ancestors settled in the late 1700s. Family lore holds that his immigrant ancestors left Scotland just ahead of the hangman, having been on the losing side in one of the Scots' wars with the English. It is also said that one of his ancestors was Fulco Ballard, who was in the employ of King Edward I. Carolyn Hale Bruce is a native of the mountains of Southwest Virginia, where her 18th century ancestors include those with the surnames Agnew and Fraser. She has written and published two pictorial histories of her hometown, Roanoke, Virginia.