This Old World

The community of Daybreak survived the war.  Can it survive the peace?   

After the war, James Turner and the other men of Daybreak return home to find that war has changed their Utopian community forever. Charlotte Turner, Marie Mercadier and the other women they left behind survived raiders and bushwackers, raised up children, and survived on little more than dogged determination. Now that the men are back—those who fought for the North and those who fought for the South—the community must somehow put the past behind them. But some carry scars too deep to heal, and others carry hate they have no intention of letting go.

Steve Wiegenstein

Steve is a Missouri Ozarks man born and bred with deep roots in Madison, Iron, and Reynolds counties.

He attended college at the University of Missouri, worked as a newspaper reporter, and then returned to Mizzou where he received a Ph.D. in English and embarked upon an academic career. He has taught at Centenary College of Louisiana, Drury College (now “university”), Culver-Stockton College, and Western Kentucky University and is currently the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, MO.

Since learning about an 1840s-era commune situated among the Comanches in north Texas, he has been fascinated by Utopian societies. In his Daybreak series (SLANT OF LIGHT and THIS OLD WORLD), he has combined his academic interest with his passion for history, fiction writing, and his long family heritage deep in the Missouri Ozarks. 

He is an avid hiker and canoer, rafter and kayaker on Missouri’s float streams. He serves as a board member of the Missouri Writers’ Guild. He lives in Columbia, MO with his wife, Sharon Buzzard, who is a professor of English at Mizzou.