Star Wars. Doctor Who. Avengers. We all geek out over something.
I’m a history nerd.
That’s why I based much of SHRAPNEL on real groups and historical events in and around Mobile, Alabama. One of those groups is the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC), a group of Confederate sympathizers whose job it was to protect the alleged Confederate gold and smuggle it to safety, where the Union couldn’t get it.
Although common theory is that the gold went west after traveling from Virginia to Georgia, no one knows how and if it got there.
I proposed that it could have gone through Mobile since it’s a port city, it was low on the Union’s priority list and there were a number of forts in the region.
The KGC was recently featured again on The History Channel’s program, America’s Book of Secrets. It features Sonny Brewer and Warren Getler, authors of REBEL GOLD, the book I mainly used for research when writing SHRAPNEL.
[View the complete episode here.]
Here’s the kicker and the reason I’m mentioning the KGC again: At about 6:34 in the video, there’s a map with specific points on it that allegedly indicate locations of Confederate gold.
Yep, that’s Mobile starred in the center
Guess which city’s got a big star over it?
Yep, Mobile. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Mobile mentioned as a possible location.
Maybe my theory isn’t fiction after all …
