Moses Rose

Moses Rose is fiction based on a legend, a novel which when first published in 1996 was called “intriguing” by The Dallas Morning News . . .  an “imaginative tale in which Rose must deal with many different meanings of heroism, survival, loneliness, and love.”

Even now, some 180 years after the fall of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, scholars, Alamo buffs, and Texans in general continue to debate whether Louis Rose actually existed, and if he did, whether he stayed at the Alamo to die (or disappear after the attack), or whether he was the only defender to decide to leave on the night before the Mexican Army’s final assault, when Colonel William Barret Travis drew his famous “line in the sand.”  

This work of historical fiction imagines a life for Louis Rose, called “Moses” by other Alamo defenders because as one of the oldest men in the fortress, he was a veteran of Napoleon’s Grand Army and its disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.  In Moses Rose, he chooses to leave knowing the consequences of his fateful decision: facing the rest of his life trying to cope with hatred, suspicion, and death threats (and attempts) because of his decision.  He does not know that he is destined to meet Mary Kimbro.

Mary’s husband chose to accept a certain death at the Alamo, leaving behind Mary and their hopes for a long life on the Texas frontier, as well as their wishes for a large family to help create an expanding America.  She is embittered, and survives only with the emotional and physical protection of her friends, freed slaves Martha and Elvin.  

Louis and Mary travel separate paths during the months after the fall of the Alamo, each enduring physical dangers and moral crises during the rain-soaked Runaway Scrape that flooded much of frontier Texas in the Spring of 1836.  But their paths eventually meet, and both Louis and Mary will be profoundly changed – by deaths that continue to strike the pioneers struggling to create a new Republic of Texas; by attempts to kill Moses; by the individual memories of Moses and Mary, and the collective memories they begin to create together; and by the their struggling chances of redemption, of love, and of the future.


Brief Biography:

William Rainbolt, Ph.D, is a native Texan who has lived in the Hudson Valley of New York State for four decades.  He is a retired visiting associate professor from the University at Albany Department of English, where he was Director of the Journalism Program.  He now volunteers in hospital chaplaincy and pastoral care.  He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy.


Keywords: Alamo, Texas, Historical Fiction, Alamo Survivors, Frontier, Pioneer Life, Legend