Promised Valley Rebellion

Ron Fritsch has published a four-book series of Promised Valley novels: Promised Valley Rebellion, Promised Valley War, Promised Valley Conspiracy and Promised Valley Peace. The novels have won a number of awards and highly favorable reviews. The series is complete. In the epic Promised Valley adventure, prehistoric farmers inhabit a fertile river valley they believe their gods promised them in return for their good behavior and obedience. Their enemies, hunters roaming the mostly barren hills beyond the mountains enclosing the valley, believe their gods gave it to them. Both sides, though, value individuals who partner with persons of their own gender. Because they have no children to raise, they take leadership positions, especially in times of war. The four Promised Valley novels ask whether civilization and history, with their countless heaven-sanctioned wars and genocides, could’ve begun differently. The individuals who live, struggle, revel, die and survive in the novels confront fundamental questions: How factual are the stories their ancestors handed down to them? Despite those stories, are they and their enemies equal human beings who deserve to be treated as such? Are their gods-who appear to be the same deities for the farmers as well as the hunters, even as they exhort both of their supposedly favored peoples to kill the other-truly benevolent gods? Or do their gods, outside of those ancestral stories that might not be true, simply not exist? Fritsch grew up in rural northern Illinois. His father and mother were hard-working tenant farmers who loved to read. So did he and his siblings (one older sister, one older brother, one younger sister). Fritsch obtained a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Illinois (major: history; minor: English literature) and a law degree cum laude from Harvard Law School. Fritsch lives in Chicago with his long-term partner, David Darling.