Why I Wrote Lion Mountain
People often ask why I spent years researching and writing my historical novel after publishing books on biblical studies, theology, and marketing.
The answer begins long before I ever sat down at a keyboard. It begins with a family. All of my grandparents and great-grandparents had died before I was born. I never had the opportunity to sit with them around a kitchen table, hear their stories, or ask about the choices that shaped their lives. Like many families, our history was slowly disappearing as one generation passed to the next.
That realization changed me.
For more than twenty-five years, I have researched my family’s remarkable history. What began as simple curiosity eventually became a journey through libraries, archives, cemeteries, museums, mining towns, family Bibles, original letters, newspaper collections, paintings, photographs, and historical documents. I traveled repeatedly to places where my ancestors actually lived, including Atlanta, Idaho, Glendale, Montana, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Bristol, Connecticut. Over time, I came to know them in a way I never thought possible. In many respects, writing Lion Mountain became my opportunity to meet the great-grandfather I never knew.
Learn more about the book and available editions here.
A Story Hidden in American History
Growing up, I knew my grandfather had been born in the tiny gold mining town of Atlanta, Idaho. I knew my great-grandfather, Elias Cornelius Atkins, had left Indianapolis to pursue mining opportunities in the rugged West during the great mining boom of the nineteenth century. But those were only fragments.
As my research continued, I uncovered original letters written by Elias, family Bible records dating to the mid-1800s, portraits, paintings, business records, newspaper articles, and treasured family heirlooms. I discovered the story of a family that helped build one of America’s great manufacturing companies while simultaneously participating in the expansion of the American frontier. I realized these were not simply my family’s stories. They were part of America’s story.
Bringing History to Life
As a lifelong student of history, I’ve always believed facts become far more meaningful when experienced through people. Rather than writing another genealogy or historical account, I wanted readers to walk the dusty streets of frontier mining camps, experience the hardships of the Idaho Territory, and understand what life was really like for those who helped build the American West. Historical fiction allows readers to experience history emotionally as well as intellectually. That became my goal.
Although Lion Mountain is fiction, it is deeply rooted in real places, real events, and real people: Atlanta, Idaho; Glendale, Montana; The Civil War era; Mining camps; Pioneer travel; and my love for the American West. Many of the historical figures in the novel actually lived, while other characters were created to tell a larger story.
The fictional narrative also draws from my own experiences exploring and hunting in the mountains of California, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. My repeated visits over the past twenty-five years to Atlanta and Glendale allowed me to walk the same ground my ancestors walked, stand where they stood, and better understand the extraordinary challenges they faced.
Why Time Travel?
Some readers have asked why I chose a time-slip story rather than writing a traditional historical novel. The answer begins with my family’s long connection to clocks and clockmaking.
Elias C. Atkins was born in Bristol, Connecticut, one of the great centers of early American clock manufacturing. His father, Rollin Atkins, and his uncle, the Rev. Irenus Atkins, were accomplished clockmakers whose work helped establish Bristol’s reputation for precision craftsmanship. Long before the Atkins name became known around the world for manufacturing saws, it was associated with measuring time.
That history made a clock the natural bridge between the past and the present in Lion Mountain. It was not simply a convenient literary device invented for the story. It grew directly from the real history of my family.
The clock symbolizes craftsmanship, inheritance, and the passage of generations. It also represents the fragile connection between what has been preserved and what has nearly been forgotten. A clock quietly passes from one generation to another while the people who once wound it eventually disappear. In the novel, it becomes the means by which a modern descendant crosses that distance and encounters the ancestors he never had the opportunity to know.
A modern protagonist also gives readers a familiar point of entry into the nineteenth-century West. As Stuart experiences the frontier through contemporary eyes, readers discover its dangers, hardships, faith, and courage alongside him.
For me, the time-slip expresses something deeply personal: the desire to cross the distance between generations and meet the people whose choices made my own life possible. In fact, the 1859 Atkins wall clock below hangs in our living room and works wonderfully. It was a wedding gift and inspired the time-travel theme in Lion Mountain. It was hand built in Bristol CT by an ancestor.
More Than an Adventure
At its heart, Lion Mountain is about legacy. Every generation leaves something behind. Sometimes it is wealth. Sometimes it is a business. Sometimes it is faith. Sometimes it is simply the courage to do what is right when the future is uncertain. Those are timeless lessons. I wanted readers to finish the novel asking themselves what kind of legacy they will leave for their own children and grandchildren.
Faith Woven Naturally Into the Story
Readers familiar with my work at ChristianProofs.com may wonder why Lion Mountain is not an overt work of Christian apologetics. That was intentional. Faith certainly influences many of the characters, just as it influenced countless pioneers who settled the American West. But I wanted the story—not sermons—to carry the message. Truth, courage, sacrifice, redemption, providence, and hope are woven naturally into the narrative rather than presented as formal arguments.
My Hope for Readers
More than anything, I hope readers close the final page with a renewed appreciation for those who built the America we inherited. I hope they see that ordinary people can live extraordinary lives. I hope they remember that every family has stories worth preserving.
And perhaps they’ll be inspired to ask their own parents and grandparents questions before those stories are lost forever. If Lion Mountain encourages even one reader to preserve his family’s history—or to think more deeply about the legacy he will leave—then writing it was well worth the effort.
Leaving a Legacy of My Own
As I researched my family history, I realized something sobering. Every generation stands at a crossroads. We inherit the stories of those who came before us, but unless someone intentionally preserves them, those stories often disappear within a generation or two. That realization gave me a sense of responsibility.
Lion Mountain is more than a novel. It is my contribution to the long chain of the Atkins family. I hope it will preserve not only the memory of Elias Cornelius Atkins and the pioneers who helped shape our family’s history, but also the values they lived by—faith, courage, perseverance, sacrifice, and hope.
One day, my children, grandchildren, and future generations of the Atkins family may wonder where they came from and what kind of people their ancestors were. My hope is that this novel, together with the historical research I have spent more than twenty-five years gathering, will help answer those questions.
Every family leaves something behind. Some leave businesses. Some leave homes. Some leave photographs tucked away in old albums. I hope to leave something different.
I hope to leave a written legacy—a record of the people, places, and events that shaped our family, so that generations yet unborn will know that their story did not begin with them. They are part of a much larger journey, one that stretches across centuries and helped shape a small part of the American story.
If, many years from now, a young member of the Atkins family opens Lion Mountain or reads these historical accounts and feels a connection to those who came before, then I will have accomplished something far more meaningful than simply publishing a novel.
Stuart Atkins
Interested in the story? Discover Lion Mountain: A Legacy Across Time—a historical time-slip western inspired by my own family history. Learn more about the book and available editions here.
About the Author
Stuart Atkins is a retired marketing professional with over 25 years of experience in the high-technology industry and a former adjunct professor of marketing at Cal State Fullerton, where he taught for 17 years while also operating a small digital marketing agency. He holds an MBA and two degrees in theology and has written books on business and theology. He writes on Christian apologetics, history, economics, and worldview issues, drawing on both academic study and decades of professional experience. He is the founder of ChristianProofs.com and recently released a historical time-slip novel, Lion Mountain: A Legacy Across Time: https://christianproofs.com/lion-mountain-a-legacy-across-time/