A FORMER newspaper reporter is poised to publish his debut novel based on a story he covered on his old north Pembrokeshire beat.

Mike Lewis was based in Fishguard when he learnt of William James, a Dinas Cross farmer’s son who emigrated to the United States and fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn when 210 soldiers were massacred by thousands of Native Americans on June 25, 1876.

“BBC Wales did a documentary on James in 2002,” recalled Mike. “I then wrote a follow-up article after managing to locate living relatives.

“Back in north Pembrokeshire a few years later I found myself again driving past James’s old childhood home – it got me thinking what kind of person he was and why exchange west Wales farming life to serve as a soldier on the American frontier?

“I subsequently stumbled across a previously-unknown batch of letters James dispatched to his younger brother – I’d also hoped to find a photo of the bloke himself, but although he sent one home I have not yet managed to locate it.”

The long-lost letters form the framework of ‘If God Will Spare My Life…’ to be published by Staffordshire-based Victorina Press in June. A work of fiction, it is based on true events.

“Research took years; the writing only a few months,” said Mike. “I found it a unique, if unsettling, experience.

“At one point I was bashing out 2,000 words a day. It sounds bonkers, but it was as if someone was standing alongside me dictating what I wrote.

“IGWSML relates a brutal schooling in the Welsh Not era, a chain of family tragedy, the 1871 Great Fire of Chicago, the violent Reconstruction era in the Deep South when the Ku Klux Khan ran rampant and, latterly, Custer’s Last Stand.”

Set in a dual narrative, the book follows young solicitor Arthur Nicholas in his quest to trace James – heir to a family farm near Fishguard - almost 30 years after his disappearance. Nicholas’s search is interspersed by James reflecting on his grim past in the first person.

As the Seventh Cavalry approach their Armageddon, James belatedly comes to realise he is as much a fugitive as the Indians he is pursuing – yet the one thing a man can never escape is himself...

“I don’t regard IGWSML as a Custer book,” said Mike.

“I see it more as a story about someone trying to come to terms with who he is while asking the fundamental question: ‘Do the things I have been through have to shape me’?

“Yet the protagonist is not some west Wales farmer’s son idly daydreaming while toiling on the land; he is a trooper in Custer’s Seventh on the way towards their annihilation.

“I have tried to be as authentic as possible, while seeking to convey a feeling of mounting dread.

“James can sense something terrible is coming even if his superiors cannot.”

‘If God Will Spare My Life…’ is available on pre-order from Victorina Press – www.victorinapress.com