Author Matthew CostLITERARY LUNCH Featuring Matthew Cost
Friday, March 17, 11:30 AM
Registration is required.
Seating registration is free, or $12 for a catered lunch from Boothbay House of Pizza. Register for catered lunch by Wednesday, March 15. Call 633-3112 or visit to register.
Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War: At Every Hazard is a historical novel about one of that war’s genuine heroes, a college professor with no formal military training who, together with a small company of men, turned the tide of the battle and the war with a bayonet charge at Gettysburg. This was not the end of his exploits, however, and by war’s end, he was so respected that Ulysses S. Grant chose Chamberlain to accept the South’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.
The novel traces his evolution from an arrogant, overbearing professor to unwitting and unlikey hero and leader of men. Interwoven are subplots including the coming of age of his young orphaned aide, a complicated marriage, and of course, lots of rousing battle scenes.
The story begins with a ferocious battle scene that orphans fourteen-year-old Emmett Collins. Following the last instructions of his father, Emmett shows up on Chamberlain’s doorstep in Brunswick, Maine, where he joins Chamberlain and the 20th Maine as they embark for war in the late summer of 1862. He grows from a boy into a man over the next three years as he accompanies Chamberlain on his rise through the ranks to Major General and recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Matthew Langdon Cost graduated with a B.A. in history from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Right after graduation he wrote a yet unpublished historical novel about the Cuban Revolution of 1953-1959. He has since published two mystery novels, Mainely Power and Mainely Fear. In 2007, after taking a two-week class on teaching biography in the classroom, Cost decided to return to historical fiction, choosing Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War as his topic. The novel was published in April of 2015 and has been getting extremely good reviews from national publications such as “KIRKUS REVIEW” and the “Civil War News”. Cost was a business owner for ten years in Brunswick, Maine. His ventures included a video store, a fitness club, and a bookstore. He was then a middle school social studies teacher for ten years, and has now dedicated himself to life as a writer.