My publisher thought my new thriller was too political. So I found another.



There are three high bars in the modern literary trade — writing a good novel, getting it published, and selling it to the public.

I’ve cleared the first two with my new political-thriller mystery, “The Camelot Trail,” which comes out November 17. Now I have to clear the third.

I committed another contemporary heresy in 'Paper Tigers': I gave the character I politically disagree with dignity and wit.

That last bar used to be lower once you cleared the first two. Publishers, even smaller ones, had a built-in promotional pipeline. They would set up radio interviews and nationwide book signings and send review galleys to genre-specific media like Analog for science fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for mysteries, and Romantic Times for, yes, romance novels.

But that was the 20th century, when reading was still commonplace and before the internet atomized audiences. The publishing business has changed in other ways too.

Heroes wanted

At the turn of the millennium, "Harry Potter" triggered a reading boom among young and old alike. J.K. Rowling established her fantasy universe with a strong male lead, and boys showed up in force. A 2006 Scholastic study found that 57% of boys ages 5 to 17 had read "Harry Potter," compared with 51% of girls.

The best-seller lists of the 2000s were also thick with male-driven thrillers and mysteries from Lee Child, Dan Brown, Vince Flynn, John Grisham, Harlan Coben, and others. Their readership was hardly confined to men. Men and traditional women still appreciate alpha males.

Yet over the next decade, publishing and Hollywood increasingly came to regard the traditional male hero as something requiring correction.

I noted the latter tendency eight years ago in my first article for the American Spectator. Marking the 10th anniversary of the action-thriller hit “Taken,” I wrote that a film about a heroic white father rescuing his kidnapped daughter from Albanian sex traffickers would never be greenlit in 2018. Radical feminists would reject the original story as patriarchal toxic masculinity.

Their “Taken” remake, I joked, would depict the father as a cretin while the minority-race mother kicks white male ass to save their mixed-race gay son from a white-supremacist Christian cult. Whether the resulting movie would be laughed off the screen would matter less than the message.

Male jail

Consider Rachel Zegler explaining Disney’s new “Snow White”:

“She’s not going to be saved by the prince,” Zegler said. “And she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”

So get with the program, all you silly girls dreaming about true love and Prince Charming, and you useless boys with no hero to emulate or damsel to rescue.

They can still find both archetypes in books from independent publishers.

Publishing itself is overwhelmingly female. The Association of American Literary Agents’ 2023 membership survey found 82.1% of respondents identified as "cis women," versus 14% as "cis men." The organization’s DEI committee explicitly describes agents as “gatekeepers” and says part of its mission is to advance AALA as an “anti-racist organization.”

The AALA does not, of course, publish a sign reading STRAIGHT WHITE MALE HEROES NEED NOT APPLY. But if you are a straight white male writing novels about masculine heroes and sexy women, you can draw your own conclusions.

I did.

Heretic's tale

I’ve written five books, including what I immodestly consider a Great American Novel, “Paper Tigers.” It’s about two copy aides at the Washington Post who discover that chemistry trumps ideology. My Christmas romantic fantasy, “The Christmas Spirit,” has become a Yuletide perennial among some readers.

So why haven’t you heard of either book?

Because they were put out by small independent publishers willing to offer readers things the majors increasingly seem embarrassed by — in my case, romantic tough guys and beautiful feminine women who appreciate the opposite sex.

By 2020, I had little expectation that those once-unremarkable elements would win me a top agent, let alone a mainstream publisher. And I committed another contemporary heresy in “Paper Tigers”: I gave the character I politically disagree with dignity and wit.

That’s rather important in a romantic comedy. It may also help explain why Hollywood has largely abandoned the kind of romantic comedy in which men and women are permitted to like one another.

The trade-off with boutique publishers is promotion. They simply don’t have the budgets and machinery of the majors.

RELATED: Hard-boiled detective fans should follow 'The Washington Trail'

Lou Aguilar

The thrill is gone

Which brings me back to “The Camelot Trail.”

It is book two of my political-thriller mystery series featuring young Washington private detectives Mark Tristan and Neil Cork. In “The Washington Trail,” they tackle what begins as the simple case of a beautiful UNC co-ed dumped by her D.C.-based fiancé. The intrigue escalates into a deadly political conspiracy.

A political thriller has to be timely.

“The Washington Trail” came out in August 2024, and the story takes place in February of that year. But I wrote it in 2023, when Donald Trump had what appeared to be a likelier future as a prisoner than as president. I had to anticipate the political situation a year ahead, knowing that a single contrary development could derail months of work.

I submitted the manuscript that October. Aethon Books accepted it and offered me a contract for two more novels in the series.

By the time “The Washington Trail” appeared the following summer, its plot was still on the cutting edge.

Then real life started behaving like a political thriller.

I turned in the second book, “The Camelot Trail,” last June, in time for what I hoped would be a lucrative pre-Christmas release.

The Aethon editors balked. They apparently considered the book too political to have broad commercial appeal — which I understood to mean too politically incorrect — and gave me a choice: Soften the politics or take back full rights to the series, including de-publication of “The Washington Trail.”

Blazing a 'Trail'

I had to weigh the two options carefully.

“The Camelot Trail” follows Tristan and Cork as they bodyguard an expatriate English literature professor forced to flee Britain in fear for his life. His Excalibur Movement, urging a return to Arthurian chivalry among young men, has drawn threats from Islamists, feminists, and a British government increasingly hostile to him. He finds refuge in America, but a massive Excalibur rally planned for the National Mall once again makes him a target.

Softening the politics would have required a full rewrite, with no chance of making the Christmas season.

Finding another publisher could cost me the same window.

I chose option two.

I contacted World Castle Publishing, the publisher of “The Christmas Spirit,” which has sold well for the company every Christmas. On the strength of that book, World Castle agreed to keep “The Camelot Trail” on the original schedule and republished “The Washington Trail” this summer.

“The Camelot Trail” comes out November 17.

Now I really have to clear that third bar.

The last knight of Europe rides again



History can tell you what happened at Lepanto. G.K. Chesterton can make you hear it.

On October 7, 1571, a fleet of the Holy League met the Ottoman navy off western Greece in one of the largest galley battles ever fought. The Christian victory halted Ottoman naval momentum in the Mediterranean and became one of the defining military events of early modern Christendom.

We are not observers of a glorious Christian past.

Four hundred and fifty-five years later, the battle itself is rarely discussed outside history books and Catholic circles. Chesterton’s “Lepanto” helps explain why that is a loss.

The poem does something a chronology cannot. It takes an old battle and makes it present.

That distinction matters because we have largely forgotten how to teach history as inheritance. Too often, the past arrives as a clinical sequence of dates and events — or worse, as a catalog of embarrassments for which the living are expected to apologize. Our ancestors understood that memory had to be cultivated.

I was fortunate enough to grow up partly outside that system. My homeschool education included memorizing and reciting some of the great poems of the Western canon.

Memorization itself was useful. But those poems did more than exercise the mind. They taught me to love and remember the heroes, soldiers, saints, and scholars who built the civilization I inherited.

A textbook can explain the Crimean War. Tennyson makes you hear the cavalry moving: “Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.” A history of Rome can tell you the legend of Horatius at the bridge. Thomas Babington Macaulay puts the choice in the mouth of the man himself:

Then out spake brave Horatius
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods.”

The same is true closer to home. A paragraph about the British march on Concord can explain what happened. Longfellow’s “Listen, my children, and you shall hear” makes a child want to remember it.

RELATED: Remember the Battle of Lepanto

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These works are literary masterpieces, but that is not the whole of their value. They are meant to stir the imagination. They give history rhythm, voice, courage, tragedy, and glory.

Chesterton’s “Lepanto” belongs in that company.

He wrote it in 1911, before World War I and more than a decade before he formally entered the Catholic Church. Yet the poem’s religious imagination is already unmistakable. Chesterton does not treat Lepanto merely as a naval engagement. He presents it as civilizational and spiritual combat, with Don Juan of Austria riding into a struggle that reaches backward through Christian history.

The poem’s movement is part of its power: drums, gongs, guns, trumpets, waves, banners, and cannon fire. Chesterton does not ask the reader to stand at a safe academic distance. He drags him onto the deck.

At one point, the Ottoman side hears something older than the fleet approaching it:

But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not "Kismet"; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!

Chesterton uses “Kismet” to dramatize what he saw as a contrast between fatalism and the Christian refusal to surrender to supposedly inevitable defeat. Richard the Lionheart, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Godfrey of Bouillon appear not as museum pieces but as members of the same inheritance. Godfrey, leader of the First Crusade, became ruler of Jerusalem under the title Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre.

The poetry lets the reader place himself in that line. Christian history ceases to be a collection of remote episodes and becomes a living inheritance — something received, loved, defended, and handed on.

That spirit has become difficult for the modern West to summon.

One line from the poem has always stayed with me. Describing a Europe divided by religious conflict while the Ottoman threat advanced, Chesterton writes: “And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise.”

He was writing about a particular historical moment, but the line captures something recognizable now: spiritual exhaustion disguised as sophistication. We have seen so much, mocked so much, qualified so much, that conviction itself begins to look embarrassing.

Chesterton’s Europe is divided, distracted, and half-convinced that resistance is pointless. The pope calls for “swords about the Cross,” while other rulers hesitate or look elsewhere. Even the Christian captives below the Ottoman decks have nearly stopped expecting deliverance.

Then comes Don Juan.

Dim drums throbbing in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe taketh weapons from the wall.

That is the great appeal of the poem. Don Juan does not enter because victory is guaranteed. He enters because something must be defended.

RELATED: After 800 years, why do we still treat St. Francis as a glorified garden gnome?

Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images

Chesterton reminds the reader that courage often arrives from an unexpected quarter. Don Juan, the illegitimate son of Charles V, was hardly born into the tidy life of a storybook hero. Yet he became the man who took command when command was needed.

That is what the old poems can still teach us. We are not merely observers of a glorious Christian past, reading about better men in safer times. We inherit what they defended, and inheritance creates an obligation.

We owe a debt to the saints and heroes who came before us. Honoring it does not require pretending we are Don Juan of Austria. It requires the willingness to take responsibility for what has been handed to us — and the courage to defend what is true when resignation would be easier.

History can tell us that Lepanto happened.

Chesterton reminds us why anyone should care.

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Glenn Beck's message to America on the 25th anniversary of 9/11



September 10, 2001, felt like any other day. Americans went to work, made plans, walked their dogs, and tucked their children into bed without knowing they were living through the final hours of a world that was about to change forever.

On the anniversary of 9/11, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is reflecting on the courage and sacrifice that emerged in the wake of the attacks — and the gratitude Americans should have for every ordinary morning they get to wake up to.

“Do you know when the bridges and tunnels closed, half a million people were stranded, right there in lower Manhattan? Half a million. Sky was on fire behind them. Black, dust, ash everywhere,” Glenn recalls.

“The Coast Guard put out a call for every boat that could come,” he explains. “Tugboats, ferries, dinner cruises, fishing charters, you know, a guy with a Boston whaler.”


After the 9/11 attack, those vessels took half a million people off the island.

“It was the largest — and still is— the largest sea evacuation in the history of the world. Bigger than Dunkirk,” he says.

However, Americans quickly forgot the sacrifice others made out of love for their country and people.

“We have spent 25 years telling everybody it’s wicked, that it’s rotten. It was rotten from the start. That everything it gave us was stolen and everything that it built should be torn down or burned down,” he says.

But this “wicked” country is “still feeding us this morning.”

“It’s still a place people are dying in the desert to reach. It still goes on loving a generation that never once said thank you and might even be embarrassed to say thank you, America,” he explains.

And not only are foreigners doing everything they can to get into the country, but they’re doing it because an ordinary America that sees little gratitude is actually extraordinary.

“We’re standing in the ordinary,” Glenn says. “A different kind, but an ordinary today. Right now, somewhere in this country, there’s a morning coming that will divide our lives entirely. And that day is not on any calendar.”

“Nobody’s watching and saying, ‘I know when that’s going to happen.’ And what we will remember about today, this Thursday, this nothing of a day, is what we always remember,” he explains, noting that we will not remember “the argument” or “the elections.”

We will remember “the kitchen, the dog, somebody’s hand on the back of your neck.”

“I remember September 10, 2001. It was the last ordinary day of my life, of the America I knew. And in one day, the next morning, that ordinary America was completely different,” he says.

“It’s weird that we call what’s happening in the world today ordinary, but it is. It’s just the new normal,” he continues. “And I thank God we got another September 10.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Was This Generation’s 9/11

May the 25th anniversary of our 'never forget' moment find us with something true, good, and beautiful to show for it.

Archangel Michael statue may yet win the battle against the ACLU after an army of warriors rallies to its cause



A Massachusetts city in the Greater Boston area commissioned a pair of 10-foot-tall bronze statues heavy with cultural and historical significance to honor police and firefighters outside their new public safety headquarters.

Upon learning that the city of Quincy's new statues — one depicting Florian, a third-century firefighting Roman Christian, and the other depicting the winged archangel Michael stepping on the head of a demon — also carried religious significance, the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of secularizing activist groups joined a few locals in suing last May to block the installation.

'The ACLU has pitted itself against the very heroes who keep our communities safe.'

The city, which will make its case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with the help of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on May 6, has received an outpouring of support from first responders' groups and unions, religious groups, and others keen to defend free speech found intolerable by thin-skinned critics.

The International Association of Fire Fighters and its Bay State affiliate, among the groups that submitted court filings in support of the city, noted that "for the firefighting community, there is perhaps no better image for this project than St. Florian."

Norfolk Superior Court Judge William Sullivan, the Democratic appointee who blocked the planned installation in October, previously argued that the statues "serve no discernable secular purpose."

The IAFF flatly rejected that argument.

RELATED: Whose past predicts your future?

Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

"Florian, to be sure, is venerated as a Catholic saint. But that isn't why the City of Quincy is putting him on its public safety building," the IAFF's court filing reads. "Rather, that choice reflects a centuries-old tradition that honors Florian — entirely apart from his significance in the Catholic Church — as a symbol of the courage, selflessness, and sacrifice of firefighters around the world."

Moreover, the association underscored that Florian's legend is now "part of the cultural fabric of firefighting."

The National Association of Police Organizations similarly said of the St. Michael statue, "Although Michael's origins are religious, his significance extends far beyond that context. He is the archetype of core law-enforcement virtues: justice, courage, leadership, and defense of the innocent."

The National Fraternal Order of Police echoed this understanding and drove the point home:

The erection of these statues shows no semblance of religious subordination or favoritism. For this Court to prohibit these statues would not only run contrary to the text and purpose of the Religion Clauses of the Massachusetts Constitution but would also rob the people of Quincy of a special opportunity to honor their firefighters and police officers.

While the Knights of Columbus highlighted America's and Massachusetts' rich histories of acknowledging religion in public art, the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team and the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty discussed the likely fallout of the ACLU prevailing in this case and how that result might disproportionately impact minority faiths.

They noted, for example, that a ruling against Quincy might set a precedent for denying practicing Jews the ability to build an eruv in public — a demarcated area, created by placing nearly invisible wires on existing utility poles, that permits Jews to carry essential items on the Sabbath.

The American Legion said in its filing that giving the secularists a win here "would put the Massachusetts Constitution on a collision court with the federal one." The Legion noted further that while a state may not favor a religion, it "also may not favor nonreligion by adopting a posture of hostility towards faith."

Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket and attorney for Quincy, stated, "By picking this fight, the ACLU has pitted itself against the very heroes who keep our communities safe."

"This broad coalition of firefighters and police — along with diverse faith communities, public policy experts, and legal scholars — proves just how out of touch the ACLU has become," Davis continued. "We’re hopeful the court will see through this attack and side with Quincy."

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'True heroes': Brothers rescue cop from cruiser engulfed in flames — and credit their mother, who taught them the Golden Rule



Atlanta police last week shared a video report they said demonstrates that "in moments of crisis, true heroes emerge."

On the night of Oct. 21, Officer Malik Safi was responding to a call for backup — but he never arrived at the scene, officials said.

'I feel extremely proud of them both. I feel like they did exactly what they were taught to do — to help and have empathy for other people.'

Instead, Safi crashed into a house, setting both the residence and his patrol vehicle on fire, officials said.

WSB-TV reported that Safi also suffered serious injuries in the crash and was trapped inside the vehicle.

But fortunately brothers Keshun Robinson and Ryan Beck — and others — were around to help.

In fact, they braved the flames and pulled Safi out of his burning cruiser and to safety. That heroic action is captured, in part, on Safi's body-worn camera.

“We just went off our heart,” Beck later said. “[It’s] how we was raised, you know. We didn't want to see nobody suffer in that type of situation. We just hopped out and sprung into action."

Robinson added, “We just tried to comfort [the officer] and let him know that he wasn’t there by himself."

But the danger wasn't over.

Soon gunshots were ringing out — and Robinson said "one of [the officer's] guns that was in the car actually started going off."

With that, police said the group had to move Safi yet again, this time pulling him all the way to a sidewalk.

RELATED: Hero cousins — just 9 and 11 — step up in a big way when they notice trouble at their favorite ice cream shop

What's more, an unknown woman seen and heard on Safi's bodycam video got on police radio and told dispatch he needed help.

WSB said the officer was taken to a hospital, and police noted that the "bravery and selflessness" of the two brothers and the other Good Samaritans "saved Officer Safi’s life."

Later Beck noted to police that his mother raised him and his brother to live by the Golden Rule: "Treat people how you want to be treated."

Their mother, Keziah Reed, also appeared in the police department's video report and said, "I feel extremely proud of them both. I feel like they did exactly what they were taught to do — to help and have empathy for other people."

Robinson added that perhaps the best part of the experience was when his own son called him a hero. "It means the world to me. It lit up my day. It made me a proud human being — not even [as] a father — just a proud person."

Police noted that "these residents remind us that community truly means neighbors looking out for one another when it matters most. From all of us at the Atlanta Police Department, thank you for your extraordinary courage."

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The Return Of Superman Signals A Culture Shift In America

There are signs that American culture is beginning to move away from our obsession with deconstruction and cynicism — and Superman is one of them.

Heroic dads speak out after tackling suspected Kansas Chiefs parade shooter and feeding him a series of punches



Kansas City Chiefs fans took to the streets of their hometown Wednesday to celebrate their team's Super Bowl victory. The merriment and festivities were cut short when at least one armed thug opened fire west of Union Station, killing a mother of two and wounding 21 others — including nine children.

The atrocity could very well have claimed more victims were it not for the prompt and reflexive bravery of a pair of dads who ran down the alleged gunman and tested his tolerance for punches.

Trey Filter and Paul Contreras, previously unknown to one another, both stressed that inaction was never an option: "It was just: just do it."

The shooting

The Kansas City Missouri Police Department indicated that the shooting started around 2 p.m. Wednesday, west of Union Station, where a stage was set up for speeches made by team players.

Blaze News previously reported that footage of the incident shared online shows panicked fans fleeing the sound of gunshots.

Twenty-two people were struck by bullets. Police noted that eight of the victims were left with "immediately life-threatening" wounds, seven with "life-threatening" gunshot wounds, and six with minor injuries.

A spokeswoman for Children's Mercy Kansas City told KSHB-TV that 11 children had been taken to the hospital with injuries, nine of whom had gunshot wounds.

Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a 44-year-old radio disc jockey and a mother of two, was fatally struck in the abdomen.

Lopez-Galvan's radio station, KKFI 90.1 FM, said in a statement, "It is with sincere sadness and an extremely heavy and broken heart that we let our community know that KKFI DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan, host of Taste of Tejano, lost her life today in the shooting at the KC Chiefs' rally. Our hearts and prayers are with her family."

The Kansas City Star reported that the local mother of two may actually have been the second fatality in the mass shooting; she died after the 3:30 p.m. Wednesday press conference wherein police noted that one person had already died.

Three suspects were taken into custody, and at least one gun was recovered from the scene. According to the KCMPD's initial report, police had detained two armed suspects. FBI Kansas City said Wednesday evening the shooting "may have involved multiple actors."

"We do not have a motive, but we are asking those who may potentially have any kind of information, a witness or video, to contact police," KCMPD Chief Stavey Graves said Wednesday.

Off-season tackles

Trey Filter was with his wife and two sons when gunshots rang out and the multitudes of people surrounding them began to duck for cover. Then someone yelled, "Get him!" he told the New York Post.

"My brain tells me, 'That must be him,'" recalled Filter. "I literally remember when I was tackling him, 'I sure hope this is who they were yelling at me to get.' Because I just went, 'Boom!' ... I really don't recall seeing him coming."

— (@)

Although Filter managed to leap onto the alleged shooter and bring him to the ground, the suspected gunman managed to wiggle free.

That's when another dad with a zero-tolerance policy for evil stepped in to help.

KETV-TV reported that Paul Contreras of Bellevue, Nebraska, was with his three daughters when they heard what they figured to be fireworks. However, when it became clear that the crackling sound was gunfire and that the alleged shooter was on the loose, his parental instincts went into high gear.

Contreras reportedly spotted another man chasing down a suspect and yelling for someone to assist.

"I didn't think about it," Contreras told KETV. "It's just a reaction. I didn't hesitate. It was just: just do it."

"So I went to go tackle him and another gentleman did the same thing," continued Contreras. "And as I'm tackling him, I see his weapon either fall out of his hand or out of his sleeve, 'cause he was wearing a long jacket."

Trey Filter's wife, Casey, lunged for the weapon after it hit the ground and attempted to secure it, reported the Post. Filter suggested the weapon was an AK-47 rifle, though police have not confirmed the make and model.

"So when I see that hit the ground, I'm like, 'Oh, you know. We gotta take this guy down,'" added Contreras.

The Nebraska dad said that he and the other "Good Samaritan" held the suspect down for what "seemed like forever, but it probably ... was like 30 seconds" until police arrived.

— (@)

When Filter saw Contreras wrestling with the suspected gunman in the dirt, he leaped back into action and began feeding him punches.

"I don't know if I knocked him out when I tackled him or what, but I had him squeezed so hard he might have been passed out all the time for all I know. I just started racking him in his ribs," Filter told the Post. "I was just yelling, 'F your gun!' and I was just hitting him in his ribs. It was great. You know, America stuff."

While Filter stuffed the suspect's breadbasket with knuckle sandwiches, Contreras reportedly went to work on the alleged gunman's face.

"The whole time he's fighting to get up and run away," said Contreras. "We're fighting each other, you know. We're fighting to keep him down and he's fighting to get up."

After police made the arrest and nearby witnesses applauded the dads' efforts, Filter told his boys, "Get your mother, we're getting the f*** out of here."

CNN indicated that it remains unclear whether the man subdued by Contreras and Filter was among the three ultimately reported detained.

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Christian students work with airman to save mother and children pinned under car: 'Oh, thank God, the kids are good'



A mother and her two children were run over by a car in the parking lot of a Christian school in Layton, Utah, last week. Between the initial trauma and the weight of the vehicle pinning them to the asphalt, the Ponson family was facing the possibility of a Christmastime tragedy; however, such was evidently not meant to be.

Nearby, there was an airman from Hill Air Force Base and dozens of capable kids, all ready to help.

"It's a miracle," Chris Crowder, associate pastor and CEO of the school, told KSL-TV. "We have just seen God do so many things here, and this is one of them."

The incident occurred just before 4 p.m. on Dec. 5 in the parking lot outside Layton Christian Academy and Christian Life Center. Bridgette Ponson was walking with her 2-year-old son, Archer, and her 3-year-old daughter, Brightly, when a driver headed west ran them over.

Police suggested it was likely an accident, indicating that the driver may have been unable to see the victims on account of the sun, reported KTSU-TV.

While the little girl was able to wriggle free, her mother and brother remained pinned under the vehicle.

Crowder indicated he summoned students inside the school to help the mother and child.

"I didn't really know what was going on," said Crowder. "I looked across the parking lot and noticed the car and they were screaming, and so I ran over there and I look under the car and I see mom and child underneath the car pinned. ... I immediately just ran into the building because I knew I had to get a lot of people to lift this car."

Around twenty kids answered the call to action.

Surveillance footage shows kids rushing out and attempting to lift the vehicle.

— (@)

"I walked out, there was a lot of commotion going on and people were just telling me to help and I just dropped my stuff and ran over," student Theophious Roach told KTSU.

Senior Airman Dominique Childress was picking up his children from the school when his son's kindergarten teacher alerted him to the commotion outside. Childress immediately bolted over and provided the rescue effort with some seasoned brawn.

"I noticed legs come out and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, there's an actual child under this car,' so I was like, 'Hey, guys, switch it up, let's get the car high enough so we can get the kid out,'" Childress recalled. "Somebody came, pulled the kid out and mom was able to get out 15 seconds later."

One of the student rescuers, Junior Saripsat, said, "We did our best, and the moment I heard the kids crying I was like, 'Oh, thank God, the kids are good."

Archer Ponson was airlifted to Primary Children's Hospital. His mother and sister were taken to a hospital by ambulance.

KSL indicated the mother, who is said to have been protecting her little boy in her arms, had to have multiple surgeries. Her children, however, suffered no broken bones. All three are expected to recover.

A GoFundMe campaign set up on the family's behalf to help the Ponsons cover their medical expenses has nearly hit its $35,000 goal.

Crowder said, "The kids were heroes, as well as the gentleman that was there and pulled them out."

Layton Christian Academy stated, "We are so proud of the LCA student body. They leaped into action to save the lives of a mom and her two kids who were pinned under a car. Proud of you all."

The father of the children, Andrew Ponson, met with the students who saved his family Monday. The heroic kids were also surprised at school by members of the Utah Jazz, who gave them tickets to the Dec. 30 home game versus the Miami Heat, reported KTSU.

Childress, who similarly received tickets to the game as thanks for his hand in the rescue operation, stressed that the students "are the purest form of the word hero."

Layton Christian Academy notes on its mission and values page, "We instill a spirit of service and compassion in our students, encouraging them to use their talents and resources to make a difference in the lives off others." Mission accomplished.

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The Dearth Of Historical Fiction Is A Disservice To Curious Kids Everywhere

Historical fiction is a gateway to the past, where young readers connect with characters living and dealing in the nuances of those times.