NEW YORK - s4story -- BookBuzz sat down with Richard K. Perkins the author of the newly released historical fiction novel The Tide Waits for No Woman (Köehler Books, ISBN: 979-8888248041). This powerful debut weaves together love, survival, and defiance against the backdrop of pre–Civil War America.

Richard K. Perkins was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and grew up in two New England villages. He is a US Naval Academy graduate, a career naval officer, and a systems engineer in the aerospace sector. He earned graduate degrees from the National Intelligence University, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has contributed nonfiction columns for The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review and published short fiction in Penn Union. He lives with his wife in Southeastern Virginia, where he spends his time penning historical fiction.

How much of the book is realistic or inspired by true facts?

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A great deal of it is a slight fictionalizing of real events in Maine's, North Carolina, and the Tidewater's histories with imagined human feelings, discussions, and but many real-world consequences. For instance, the story of the Black family comes from a contemporary first-person account of a family fleeing out of South Carolina as free blacks and one fugitive who had been trained as a cooper. Their master was one of 6000 Black slave owners in the census of 1840, after which point the race of the slave owners ceased to be clearly recorded.

In another instance, David Campbell was a merchant captain of a coastal schooner from Maine, who was shipwrecked in a storm off Ocracoke Island in the same season as the fictional character, Captain Clifford Anderson. My contemplating what was going on inside the wife he left in Maine is what inspired me to write a story about Abby. As a former naval officer, I could easily relate to having left a wife back home and wondering about what she was doing and thinking.

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Read the full interview on the BookBuzz website at https://bookbuzz.net/interview-with-author-richard-k-perkins-about-his-new-historical-novel-the-tide-waits-for-no-woman/

The Tide Waits for No Woman is available for purchase from major online retailers including:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FH34QH7R

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tide-waits...

BookShop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-tide-waits-for...

Koehler Books: https://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/the-tide-wait...

Google Books: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Tide_W...