R. Earl Muir
Author & Storyteller
II've always been passionate about storytelling and impressed by the influence it has on people and how the stories impact their daily life. I love engaging with the projects I work on, diving headfirst into the research, investigation, and production of stories I feel are worth writing about. I am a curious and proactive author.
I am a lifelong resident of Birmingham, Alabama, and I love my city. It has an interesting and complex history. Some of it is glorious and some of it very ugly. That history, both good and bad, makes it what it is today and creates a great backdrop for the stories banging around in my head. I use my past experience as a Police Officer and Detective, along with my passion for history, especially that of my beloved city, weaving the past and present into compelling stories of crime and intrigue.
“The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
TIMELESS
Magic City
"A gripping story that is packed with twists and turns from the first page to the very last. This compelling tale will make you question the timelessness of your very existence and the relationships made throughout your time.”
– Joe Walton
"An intriguing and engaging story that reminds us all of our connections to the past and our ability to impact the future for good.”
- Sandy Herren
After a thirty-seven-year career as a law enforcement officer, Sam Robbins was settling into a new routine two weeks into his retirement, but this morning would prove to be anything but routine.
On his morning walk he finds himself transported in time to the year 1901. His hometown of Birmingham, Alabama is struggling to emerge from a rowdy boom town into a leading industrial city and economic center of the south. Faced with the harsh reality of life in 1901, we follow his journey as he assimilates into the time, develops relationships, and struggles desperately to find a way back home while watching his city literally rise before his eyes. Along the way he encounters people and events that create more questions than answers as to how he got here and how to get home again.
Amidst the prosperity and development, Birmingham was emerging as industrial mecca of the world. Immigrants flooded into to the area to take advantage of all the opportunities as the city gained notice as being on the verge of becoming a major city. During this time, with reconstruction failed, the new south was employing every tactic possible to ensure that Jim Crow laws kept races separate. Hostilities grew, not only against blacks, but also Catholics and other immigrants. Despite the tensions, political infighting, and tremendous growth, the city prospered and flourished.
This is a story of those troubling times and the friendship and bond between two men -- one black and one white. It’s their story and it endures much longer than you would think.
BOMBINGHAM
A Day of Reckoning
Bombingham became the shameful moniker used by the national media for Birmingham, Alabama during the Civil Rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. In the span of three years more than fifty bombs exploded throughout the city in churches, homes and gathering places of the civil rights organizers. Fifty years later the Civil Rights district in downtown is now designated as a National Monument and attracts tourists from around the world. The city is recognized as a progressive, peaceful modern city that uses its ugly past to teach tolerance and promote inclusiveness.
On a quite Sunday morning as preparations were underway to celebrate the fifty-eighth anniversary of the most horrific of those bombs at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where four young girls were killed and many others injured, Birmingham is suddenly thrust back into chaos under a threat that has not been seen since the days of the struggle for civil rights. Lt. Fay Findlay and the Special Crimes Unit of the Birmingham Police Department team with the FBI and other federal agencies in a frantic race to quell the threat to not only save the city but the entire nation from a radical domestic terrorist organization that has been planning and preparing for decades.
Cover Photo Credit: Butch Oglesby Photography
MAGIC CITY MURDER
DÉJÀ VU
On December 4th, 2017 the body of a young girl is discovered floating in Eastlake Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Lt. Fay Findlay, head of the Special Crimes Unit of the Birmingham Police Department, encounters a case from the history books when she realizes the evidence is strikingly similar to an infamous murder from the same date and place that occurred in 1888.
The City of Birmingham was just seventeen years old when the Hawes murders brought the young industrial city into the national headlines. That crime gripped the city and the nation for months and brought about what is described as Birmingham’s darkest day.
Now, one hundred and twenty-nine years later, the crime is once again in the news as the Special Crimes Unit investigates the current case that is hauntingly similar and seems to be intrinsically intertwined to the one from more than a century ago. We follow Findlay and the SCU team as they investigate the crime and learn how each detective’s own history contributes to the unit’s success as one of the best in the nation as they try to unravel the mystery through an historic tour of the Magic City’s past and present.
The author parallels the two crimes and investigations giving the reader a perspective of the detective’s personal and professional lives, which ultimately impacts the investigation with twist.
Cover Photo Credit: Larry O. Gay
Virginia Woolf
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Storyteller at Heart
R. Earl Muir is a lifelong resident of Birmingham, Alabama, where he lives in the Historic Loft District in downtown with his wife, Pam.
His past experience as Police Officer and Detective provides an insight to the inner workings of solving crime. His passion for his city and its history are evident as he weaves stories of crime and police work with historical references of events and places taking the reader on a tour of the city both past and present.
GET A SIGNED COPY
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Unsigned books are available wherever books are sold.
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