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The early reviews for BRING DAYBREAK are starting to come in! Here's an excerpt from Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the international Historical Novel Society:

"Wiegenstein eloquently presents Daybreak as a mirror of American society: 'Conflict, injustice, rivalry—all the ills of humanity resided there, even if written in a smaller typeface than the great headlines of the world.' Tensions between the region’s rustic ideals and difficult modern realities, including Turner family disputes, echo throughout. The setting feels like a true step back in time to a pivotal era. Bring Daybreak stands alone well, but the characters are so entrancing that new readers will likely want to read the previous volumes afterward to see them again."

The final book in my Daybreak series is here at last! BRING DAYBREAK launches November 3 with an event at 6:30 p.m. in Skylark Bookshop in Columbia, my favorite local independent bookstore. The next day, November 4, I'll be in St. Louis at Subterranean Books, the wonderful bookstore in the Delmar Loop where the series was first launched back in 2012. It will be an emotional time for me to celebrate the release of this final volume in the same place it all started. If you're in St. Louis, come see me at 6 p.m.

From there, it's off to Springfield for the Missouri Folklore Society's annual conference, where I'll have a sale table set up, and then to the Reader's Depot in Rolla on Saturday, November 7.

Charlotte, James, Adam, Josephine, Charley, Petey, and the lot have inhabited my mind for so long that they feel like part of the family! But now it's time for them to take their proper home, in the world of fiction. I'm eager for readers to finally see all the books and perhaps to grasp the bigger picture of what I've been aiming at all along.

Land of Joys has been named a semifinalist in the Society of Midwest Authors annual contest, in the Adult Fiction category. I'm delighted by this honor! Books that are "historical" often get overlooked in the general excellent categories. Here's a link to the announcement.

I was thrilled to learn that Scattered Lights was named to the shortlist of finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award! It was such an honor to be among the distinguished company.

The next book in the Daybreak series is coming out later this year. I'm excited beyond words!

The book is entitled BRING DAYBREAK, a title that is drawn from the motto that the Daybreak colonists recited at the founding of their community: "Where there is darkness, let us bring Daybreak."

This book takes place in 1924-1925, and like the others in the series, it involves the inhabitants of Daybreak dealing with social change. A new generation is taking over, but the older generation still exerts influence. This book completes the series, and I'm thrilled to have reached this point in the creative endeavor that began so many years ago. I think people will find BRING DAYBREAK interesting even if they haven't read the other books, and a suitable conclusion if they've been following the series all along.