Author gives 2 presentations to sold-out groups at Medina bookstore

Photos by Tom Rivers

MEDINA – Tim Wendel gave two presentations on Tuesday to sold-out crowds at Author’s Note in Medina. Wendel wrote Rebel Falls, a historical novel about Civil War spies in Niagara Falls.

The book also includes some scenes in Orleans County. He also discussed the book during a presentation on Wednesday at Woodward Memorial Library in Le Roy.

Wendel, a Lockport native, now is a resident of Charlottesville, Va. He said independent book stores like Author’s Note have been critical in helping get the word out about his books.

Rebel Falls is fiction, set in the late summer of 1864 and based on actual, yet long-obscured events and people of the Civil War in the Niagara Falls area, including and Orleans and Niagara counties.

He became interested in the Civil War after reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals and Carl Sandberg’s Lincoln. Wendel discovered while most of the fighting was going on in the south, espionage and spying was taking place all along the Canadian border. At the center of it were two spies, John Yates Beall and Bennet Burley, whom President Lincoln had refused to pardon for their crimes.

Their goal was to seize the USS Michigan, the only warship left on the Great Lakes, and create enough dissension that people would blame Lincoln and he would lose the election, which was to take place the day after the spies planned crime. They also planned to bomb Buffalo, Cleveland and Toledo.

Author’s Note tried a new system for Wendel’s appearance, selling tickets for $5 to reserve a seat at the presentation. The $5 was then be deducted from the cost of purchasing a book.

Julie Berry, owner of Author’s Note, welcomes Tim Wendel to the bookstore on Tuesday.