JOE LOOBY · THE WORLD OF THE NOVEL
The Tenth Station
BEFORE THE ROCK
Before George Price Hays became a general, before he led the 10th Mountain Division, before men followed him up mountains—he had to find his own way.
GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA
Their Place
Long before anyone called him a hero, he was simply Price.
A boy growing up in South Carolina, shaped by a father who taught him to look beneath the surface of things.
To notice the current.To read the land.
To understand that the path everyone else follows is not always the path that takes you home.
Then his father is gone.
And Price discovers how quickly a boy can be asked to become a man.
Work becomes necessity. Responsibility replaces childhood.
But the lessons remain.
And each summer, work carries Price and his mother from Greenville toward the sea.
SULLIVAN’S ISLAND · 1914
Station Ten
The trolley carries them across the water to Sullivan’s Island—a narrow strip of sand, military posts, summer houses and numbered stations outside Charleston.
Price hauls ice.He works around Fort Moultrie.He tends horses.
And somewhere between the fort and the ocean, he begins to imagine a life larger than the one circumstance has given him.
There are paths through the dunes that seem to disappear.
Price learns to follow them anyway.
SULLIVAN’S ISLAND
The Storm Warrior
Near Station Ten, Price meets Silas McGuire, an old surfman of the United States Life-Saving Service.
Silas knows something Price doesn’t.
The ocean has paths, too.
A CHOICE ON THE BEACH
The Tenth Station
Then the storm comes.
Two women are caught in the surf.The rescue crew is offshore.Price is on the beach.
And the ice boy runs into the water.
Just a choice.
The current is stronger than he expects. The way back to the beach disappears.
So Price does what Silas taught him.
He reads the water.He changes direction.He finds another path.
All three come out alive.
And suddenly, doors that had always seemed closed begin to open.
A rip current feels like an enemy pulling you away from shore.
Fight it head-on and eventually it wins.
But the current has edges.
Read the water.Find the angle.
There is almost always another way home.
It is a lesson Price will carry much farther than either of them can imagine.
CHARLESTON
Two Worlds
One of those doors leads into a world Price has only watched from the outside.
And into the life of Clara Chamberlain.
Beautiful, intelligent, and born into a Charleston world far removed from Price’s own, Clara sees something in the ice boy before the rest of that world does.
For Price, Charleston presents another kind of current.
Tradition.Family.Expectation.Ambition.
And the possibility that perhaps he has finally found the place where he belongs.
1917
A Map for a Soldier
Before Price leaves for war, he receives a gift: a small illustrated book of hours depicting the Stations of the Cross.
He carries it to France—a map for a soldier’s spirit.
CHARLESTON
The Citadel
Price is given an opportunity that once seemed impossible:
The Citadel.
The boy who hauled ice now wears a uniform.
Discipline gives shape to ambition.The Army offers a path upward.And Price begins climbing.
But history is about to redraw every map he knows.
Price becomes an artillery officer in the 10th Field Artillery, 3rd Division.
The lessons are no longer abstractions.
Read the terrain.Carry the burden.Find the path.Hold the line.
Then, in July 1918, the German Army makes one final great attempt to break through toward Paris.
And Price finds himself on the Marne.
FRANCE · 1918
The Great War
The world Price knew disappears.
Millions of men have been fed into trenches stretching across Europe.
JULY 14–15, 1918
The Rock of the Marne
The German bombardment destroys the communications linking command posts and artillery.
Without that connection, the guns lose the information they need.
Someone has to carry the messages through the barrage.
Price gets on a horse.
WHAT A MAN CARRIES
The Tenth Station
A boy once learned that survival does not always mean overpowering the thing pulling against you.
A soldier carried another map to France.
Fall.Rise.Accept the burden.Keep moving.
The Stations of the Cross gave Price a language for endurance.
The ocean had already taught him the lesson.
There is always another path.
And the man who emerges from France will carry that lesson for the rest of his life—
through another war,toward another generation of soldiers,and eventually,
into the mountains.
GRÈVES FARM, FRANCE
For Valor
For his actions near Grèves Farm, France, First Lieutenant George Price Hays receives the nation’s highest award for valor:
THE MEDAL OF HONOR
“While thus engaged, seven horses were shot under him and he was severely wounded.”
From the Medal of Honor citation
July 14–15, 1918
At the Marne, he was twenty-five.
One horse is shot from beneath him.Then another.
He keeps riding.
By the end of the action—
SEVEN HORSES.
Price is severely wounded.
Through shellfire and chaos, his repeated journeys have helped keep Allied artillery firing.
The boy who once learned to read a current on Sullivan’s Island is now trying to read another kind of storm.
And once again, other lives depend upon his finding a way through it.
The Tenth Station
THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO TAUGHT THEM HOW TO FIGHT.
Inspired by true events, The Tenth Station follows George Price Hays from South Carolina to the Second Battle of the Marne—before history calls him back to lead the men of the 10th Mountain Division.
READ THE BOOKThe novel & the historical record
The Tenth Station imagines Price’s early life in South Carolina, his rescue, education and personal relationships. George Price Hays’s service at the Marne and Medal of Honor are historical. Contemporary views show the novel’s settings; historical reference photographs are not presented as photographs of Price’s individual actions. The Hays image is a portrait and biographical card, not an award certificate. The citation excerpt follows the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s record.
HOLD THE LINE.