I was born a hopeless dreamer... discontent with much before me, ceaselessly envisioning change for the better. Through no fault of my own, I'm also a purely analogical thinker (scored 98% on the Miller Analogy Test)... one situation relates to another. As a result, hypocrisy and double standards become quickly evident in my frame of observation and thought. I tend to look at things inside-out, for some reason, and from reverse angles. Things that frighten and bother others do not affect me as much, yet I am bothered by things that don't seem to affect others as much. My reality, then, often puts me at odds with circumstance, prevailing thought, and accepted limitations.
My passions include writing, conversation (intimate, political, sociological), motorcycles, guitar (acoustic, Bluegrass), all forms of the arts (visual, auditory, dance), cooking, building (carpentry, woodwork, landscaping), world history, French (the language, literature, culture), and living on the bayou and Mississippi Gulf Coast. Yes, too many hobbies and interests... but my mind can't rest... which explains why, since the day of my birth, I have never slept well. Even when engaged with others, my mind often slips off to another place.
Teaching (40 years) has been such a rewarding outlet for me that I could never imagine having spent my time in another career. I have met so many incredible, interesting, and promising people over time (students, parents, educators), and they have given me far more than I have given them. I see public education as the 'Mother of Opportunity' and the 'Shoulders of America.' I disregard today's criticism of public education because it is invariably distorted, baseless, or politically motivated. Our education system has made and kept America the world's super-power since WWI, and we're more powerful and successful today than ever before despite the naysayers, pundits, and talking heads who earn their bread by spreading fear, drama, sensationalism, and distrust.
The best person I've ever met in my jangled existence is my wife, Melissa (pictured above), because of her kindness, generosity, frightening perception, depth. and loyalty. We've been married going on 40 years, and she has been my greatest blessing in this life.
I have always loved a good story... and now find myself in the business of 'creating and telling stories.' A really good story cannot help but engage the human heart, whether through confusion, obstacles, struggle, defeat, or victory. Good stories are simple, yet good characters are complex... just as each of us is complex. Whether I actually succeed as a writer or not remains to be seen. Regardless, I have much to tell... and hope that you will enjoy and appreciate my efforts. They come purely from my heart, and they will, hopefully, touch yours.
My passions include writing, conversation (intimate, political, sociological), motorcycles, guitar (acoustic, Bluegrass), all forms of the arts (visual, auditory, dance), cooking, building (carpentry, woodwork, landscaping), world history, French (the language, literature, culture), and living on the bayou and Mississippi Gulf Coast. Yes, too many hobbies and interests... but my mind can't rest... which explains why, since the day of my birth, I have never slept well. Even when engaged with others, my mind often slips off to another place.
Teaching (40 years) has been such a rewarding outlet for me that I could never imagine having spent my time in another career. I have met so many incredible, interesting, and promising people over time (students, parents, educators), and they have given me far more than I have given them. I see public education as the 'Mother of Opportunity' and the 'Shoulders of America.' I disregard today's criticism of public education because it is invariably distorted, baseless, or politically motivated. Our education system has made and kept America the world's super-power since WWI, and we're more powerful and successful today than ever before despite the naysayers, pundits, and talking heads who earn their bread by spreading fear, drama, sensationalism, and distrust.
The best person I've ever met in my jangled existence is my wife, Melissa (pictured above), because of her kindness, generosity, frightening perception, depth. and loyalty. We've been married going on 40 years, and she has been my greatest blessing in this life.
I have always loved a good story... and now find myself in the business of 'creating and telling stories.' A really good story cannot help but engage the human heart, whether through confusion, obstacles, struggle, defeat, or victory. Good stories are simple, yet good characters are complex... just as each of us is complex. Whether I actually succeed as a writer or not remains to be seen. Regardless, I have much to tell... and hope that you will enjoy and appreciate my efforts. They come purely from my heart, and they will, hopefully, touch yours.
Author Biography
Robert E. Hirsch was born in Pusan, Korea in 1949. During the course of the Korean War (1950-53), his Korean mother, Kazu Park, began trying to send him to America to his American father, Peter Hirsch, due to deteriorating and dangerous war-time conditions. Korean society did not accept Amer-Asian children, and the North Koreans were actively seeking out and killing children of mixed race as Communist forces marched south. Robert, who spoke no English, arrived in America after two years of his father, grandparents, and Senator Okonski (Wisconsin) lobbying Congress to finalize his immigration. He did not reunite with his mother again until 40 years later. After arriving in America, his new American family moved to Columbus, Georgia, where Robert was denied enrollment in white public school and was forced to attend Catholic school, as did all military dependents of minority or mixed-race background. The year was 1954... Jim Crow and strict segregation ruled the South.
At age 13 he gained his American citizenship in North Carolina, but his family was then stationed overseas (Saint Germain-en Laye, France). Instead of enrolling him in a Department of Defense American school, his parents enrolled him in the French school system. Struggling against the challenges of a language barrier, a new culture, and adolescence, Robert moved forward and learned to adapt, just as he had upon landing in America. Upon returning to the U.S. as a junior in high school three years later, he was fluent in French, had experienced living on the French economy, and had traveled extensively throughout Europe.
Graduating from Cameron University (Oklahoma) in 1971 with a major in Social Studies and a minor in French, he entered the education profession. Over the next 40 years he served as a teacher, Dean of Discipline, Dean of Students, assistant middle school principal, high school principal, and superintendent. He retired in 2012, the same year his first novel, Contrition, saw print with JournalStone Publishing. In 2014 he completed the 'Tristan Trilogy' which is now under contract with Zharmae Publishing. The first novel of the series, Promise of the Black Monks, will be published in Summer/Fall of 2015, and the two sequels (Hammer of God and A Horde of Fools) will follow in six month intervals.
Dr. Robert Hirsch has resided on Davis Bayou in Ocean Springs, Mississippi (Gulf Coast) with his wife, Melissa Hirsch, since 1980. In addition to writing novels, he is currently engaged in educational consulting and public speaking, and pens a weekly newspaper column for the Ocean Springs Record.
Words from the author:
"Writing about the human condition has become a passion, I suppose, because my own life and circumstances have been swept into unforeseen currents and unexpected cultures. History is brimming with stories of this ceaseless dance... dispossession, uprooting, migration, war. It is this inevitable and inexorable struggle between the powerless and the powerful that, in fact, is the wellspring of my plots, characters, and stories. In the end, it is the human heart alone that drives us as human beings forward through the darkness... offering shelter, solace, and hope against the storms of man's own wickedness.
In a twist of fortune, I was born half-blooded in a nation and culture where I was unwelcome. I felt that even as a young child... I knew that I was different, that eyes were watching me through a narrow lens. Then, uprooted and separated from my Korean, Buddhist mother under the dual threats of war and violent racism, I found myself on a strange continent... again, half-blooded... again, different and unwelcome. Unexpectedly, as an adolescent I found myself on yet a third continent immersed within a third culture, living amongst the French. I felt the shadow of war there just as I had in Korea, as France had recently lost both the Algerian War and the Indochinese War. Pro-French Algerians, pro-French Indochinese, and French colonists had fled those war-torn countries and were trying to establish a new start in France, but there were difficulties, acts of racism and terror bombings. Also, one could not help but notice the many wounded and maimed veterans from those foreign campaigns. It was a bitter time for the proud French, and the political mood there was fraught with distrust and resentment. Nonetheless, I felt oddly at home there among the French, and it was with certain sadness and trepidation that I returned to the United States in 1965, only to find that we had signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and were now ourselves at war in Southeast Asia, one of the very places that had divided, embittered, and defeated the French. As usual... history repeated itself and America fell into the same snare.
And now we've been at war for over a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the threat of new outbreaks arising each day in the Middle East.
So it is that I became involved with historical fiction and wrote the Tristan Series (Promise of the Black Monks, Hammer of God, A Horde of Fools, God's Scarlet Fury). It is the epic, layered saga of political intrigue, war, religious division, and cultural intolerance that gripped Western Europe toward the end of the Eleventh Century, beginning with the Investiture War between Christian Church and Crown, and ending with the bloodbath known as First Holy Crusade between Christians and Muslims. Although these events occurred over a thousand years ago, they are little different than what is occurring today.
Indeed, it is a ruse of God that man pretends to learn from mistakes of history, and it is this deception alone that has doomed every generation of humanity since the dawn of civilization to ceaselessly recreate cataclysms of similar disastrous vein. Oddly, men do not simply blunder into this snare. Rather, they are led willingly, not unlike that bleating herd of hoofed victims following the lure of the Judas goat. Given that God has blessed mankind over all other beasts of the earth with superior intelligence, one might be tempted to believe that leaders of men would clearly recognize when they were repeating the follies of their ancestors… but that would be to discount pride. Ah, pride! It alone ensures that each man born upon this earth, regardless of era or circumstance, believes himself to be more clever and capable than those who came before him.
Accordingly, history is littered with the graveyards of those too weak to withstand the crushing tide of narcissism that runs so rampant within the souls of those who invent and devise war to serve the needs of a handful of the privileged and the powerful. Insisting that their own sanctified vision, twisted though it may be, is the only course to follow, these Judas goats of authority and self-appointed divinity give no consideration to consequences inflicted upon others... the dead, the maimed, the dispossessed, the refugees, the separated families, and the vanquished. Though God's name has so often been tethered to the cause of war, He did not create these ceaseless streams of war casualties so common to history. Indeed, He provided us a garden upon this earth so humanity could live in peace, prosper, and forge a meaningful existence. Let us hope, then, that this may one day yet come to pass. Amen.
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