Chance: Beginning Lands on Amazon Best Sellers List

In a literary debut that resonates with personal history and cultural upheaval, Roberts Essex's novel Chance: Beginning has landed on Amazon's Best Sellers eBook List. The book chronicles the life of Chance Brogdon, a boy born in rural Georgia and raised in the Savannah suburbs, as he navigates the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and Watergate. Spanning the presidencies from Kennedy to Carter and from the Mercury 7 space program to the introduction of the space shuttle, the narrative offers a sweeping view of mid-century America through a deeply personal lens. Published in 2025, this first volume of a planned trilogy draws on the textures of Southern life—drive-in diners, jukeboxes, rock 'n' roll, and the British Invasion—while confronting grief, trauma, addiction, racism, and violence. Essex, a Georgia-based author writing under a pseudonym, describes the book as semi-autobiographical, with the protagonist based on his own life. 'This story was written for the lonely child, for the man who carries his pain in silence, and for anyone who fears that the past defines the future,' Essex said. 'I wanted to show that healing is real and that no one is bound by their wounds.' The book is available through major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Walmart.

Roberts Essex is the pen name of a Georgia-based author whose debut novel is drawn from his own life experiences. Now in his late 60s, Essex has spent over six decades in rural Georgia. He and his wife of more than 30 years have four children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. The planned trilogy chronicles over six decades of events and decisions that shaped his life and the lives of those around him. His work explores the intersection of faith, family, loss, and redemption in the American South. Future installments, titled Chance: The Search and Chance: A New Life, will continue to follow Brogdon's story into later decades, exploring themes of survival, redemption, and faith. Essex has indicated that subsequent volumes will address his son's abduction and the aftermath that followed. For more information, visit his Website or Facebook.