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| The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas |
Michael Stephen McLaughlin was born on September 9, 1948 in Oklahoma City, OK.
He was adopted by his mother's second husband, Tom Harrigan, when she remarried
when he was five after his father was killed in an airplane accident before he was born.
He is a teacher, journalist, essayist, screenwriter, historian, philanthropist, and author
of both fiction and non-fiction. He has written numerous articles and at least nine books.
The Gates of the Alamo was published in 2000. It was a New York Times bestseller.
It won the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West from the Western Writers of America
in 2001, the TCU Texas Book Award, and the Western Heritage Award from the
National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It recreates the historic 1835
conflict between the Mexicans and Americans from the view of ordinary people:
Edmund McGowan, a naturalist; Mary Mott, a widowed innkeeper; and Terrell,
Mary's sixteen-year-old son. The New York Times Book Review wrote: "A time and
a place, a vanished world in which gallant death and honor still held tangible appeal,
while merciless slaughter was more likely the rule, are evoked with great skill."