Wilmont Kreis

Book Eight: Bishop Union School. Set on the east side of Detroit, the Bishop Union School was already in poor condition when Clara Shands came to teach in 1898. Generally referred to as simply “Bishop,” it had already acquired a well-deserved reputation as the end of the road for poor students. Although some prominent Detroiters did emerge from the institution, most of its students were doomed to fail before they began. This made a perfect setting for young gangs and it was the early setting and prep school of sorts for a group of New York immigrants who would eventually become the infamous Purple Gang. Read More 

Book Eight: The Detroit Interurban Railway. Detroit prepares to enter the 20th century with the advent of this marvel of modern transportation that premiered in September 1898. Henry Ford was working for the electric company and met Oscar Kreis at the opening of the Railway which will help force Detroit into the modern era. The tales of the railway in Book Eight are based on fact, (at least according to my grandmother). Read More 

Meanwhile, the three present-day friends, Jim Trombley, Becky Gauthier and Ben Champine have just returned from Paris to visit an old deserted mansion Jim has located in a forest of wilderness on Lake Saint Clair. Jim is about to undertake the renovation of this treasure which will ultimately reveal its role in one of Detroit’s roaring twenties crime syndicates. Read More 

Book Eight: The Chief
While the Allard boys return from fishing, Simon Shands, the clean cut but equally nefarious, son of the late Fillmore P. Shakley aka Millard P. Shands, the late master of all things evil, is awakening. Living in the master suite of Detroit’s plush Russell House, Simon has found a useful mistress in Cassie Littlefield, a poor girl turned high class hooker. Together they will control the crime industry of the emerging motor city while hobnobbing with the rich, famous, and respectable high society of Detroit. Read More 

Book Eight: The Chief, opens on two brothers fishing and playing on their father’s turn-of-the-century Lake St. Clair farm. Edmund Allard, called Diddy, has endured a number of sisters waiting for his much younger brother, Abe. As they frolic and mature on their father’s farm in the rapidly growing town of Grosse Pointe, neither could predict the twists fate holds in store for them. Read More 

THE ALLARDS BOOK EIGHT: THE CHIEF
I guess it’s time to leave THE WITCH and the nineteenth century behind and enter the twentieth. Here is the trailer:
At the turn of the 20th Century, Moses Allard’s first born son, Diddy, dies, but not before leaving a lifelong impression on his young brother, Abe, who grows up preferring fishing, duck hunting and ice boats to the family farm. Marrying Julia Forton from another early French farming family, Abe joins the police at the onset of WWI where he cuts his teeth on the early days of Prohibition and Detroit’s famous Purple Gang.
Abe’s only child, Gladys, is raised by a father who desperately longs for a son in the lakeside farming community as it enters the age of suburbia. Marrying and starting her own family, Gladys lives in an exciting era encompassing Prohibition, the Great Depression, two world wars, and the emergence of Detroit as the Motor City.
The last in a series of eight historical novels, The Chief continues to bring history to life through the eyes of one family and to be for French-Canadians what Roots is for African-Americans, but readers need not have French-Canadian heritage or be from Detroit to love these books. Read More