Q5: Professor emeritus explores Middle Ages with new novel

Q5: Professor emeritus explores Middle Ages with new novel

After a long and eventful military career, including battalion command in Vietnam and four tours as an intelligence officer and Russian foreign area specialist in Europe during the Cold War, Col. George Steger began a second career in academia. He is a professor emeritus in history and international affairs at the University of Saint Mary. He has written a book entitled “Sebastian's Way.”

The novel is the story of two men: Charlemagne, “The Thunderer,” master of all Europe in the 8th century, who fights and rules like the pagan enemies he seeks to conquer, and Sebastian, a young warrior who challenges the king to forge a new path to peace. The pitch of the book is how difficult it is to have radically different ideas from those around you, especially if you are right and those in authority are wrong. Being different needs courage and a very good reason, and one needs to be prepared to pay the price. The background for the novel was the 30-year war Charlemagne fought with the Saxons.