E. Don Harpe was born and raised in Northern Middle Tennessee, in the heart of the country where Micajah and Wiley Harpe rode on their last rampage.
Harpe and his wife have been married forty years, and last year E. Don retired from public work, choosing to devote all of his time to his family and to his writing projects.
Harpe has been a writer all his life, and is a published Nashville songwriter, having had many of his original songs published and recorded.
E. Don has completed 6 books and 2 screenplays in the past 10 years and is currently working on three more novels. The screenplay for "born wolf . DIE WOLF" is currently under consideration as a major movie.
The first book in the saga of the Terrible Harpes is an historical action novel in which he tells the story of two of his terrible ancestors, Micajah and Wiley, the infamous Harpe Brothers, and their last rampage in 1799. He tells their story using all of the actual data of their lives and also incorporates some amount of fiction in order to enhance the tale.
The Harpes have been called America's first serial killers and their story has been told and retold in history books as well as portrayed in movies and in a television program on the History Channel. They were used as characters in the Disney Davy Crockett television series, but E. Don did not like the way they were portrayed. There is a river in Middle Tennessee, The Harpeth, that according to legend and to the Tennesse State Parks department, is named after the brothers.
As the brothers are directly connected to E. Don’s branch of the Harp family, he has long wanted to write his own book about these two violent men. In born wolf . . DIE WOLF, Harpe does not paint a pretty picture of the brothers, nor does he excuse their actions, but he does show a more human side of these two terrible and violent men, and attempts to show that there may have been reasons for their violent acts.
The book begins in 1780 with John Harpe, Micajah and Wiley's father, just returning home from the battle of Kings Mountain, where he fought with the British. It ends in 1799 with the savage beheading death of Micajah Harpe.
Estimates are that the Harpe's murdered between 50 and 200 people, but the true number will never be ascertained. The brothers had few redeeming qualities, and the fact is that they terrorized the Kentucky, Tennessee and Southern Illinois countryside in the years 1798 and 1799 as it has never been terrorized before or since.
When the settlers heard the cry, "The Harpes are coming, the Harpes are coming," men armed themselves with all of their weapons and didn't like to venture into the woods alone. The women barred the door and hid the children under the bed. Once an armed posse of some 10 or 12 men backed down when they were confronted by the two Harpe brothers in the forest.
This book is written using the language, the culture and customs of the time, and includes much of the way of life of the Cherokee Indian tribe that inhabited Tennessee then. The book is action filled and borders on the supernatural as the Harpes followed the Cherokee custom and sought wisdom from the animal spirits of the forrest. During his meditations, Micajah Harpe contacted an ancient spirit being called the Wolf, and Micajah and his brother spent the rest of their lives killing men, women, and children as they tried to feed the ever hungry demon that dwelled inside them.
"born wolf . . DIE WOLF The Last Rampage of the Terrible Harpes" is a book you can't put down. It will keep you on the edge of your chair, searching the darkness behind your reading space, listening for sounds outside in the dark. Once you have been captured by the tale of the Harpe Brothers, it is as impossible to forget as if you had been captured by the brothers themselves!
born wolf DIE WOLF is a book you will be glad you read, one you'll read again to find things you missed the first time around. It's a dark and bloody story of dark and bloody men, but if you love action and adventure, this is the book for you.
If you could only read one book in the fall of 2006, this should be the one. And I'll only tell ye the one time!
