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Here’s the list of awards for STREAM so far:

2025-2026 ACCOLADES FOR DRINKING FROM THE STREAM

1. LITERARY TITAN GOLD BOOK AWARD
2. BREW Book Excellence Award 2026 for Political Fiction
3. Pencraft Prize — Best Book for Fiction - Adventure
4. International Firebird Book Award — First Place Winner / Thriller Category
5. Independent Press Award — 2026 Distinguished Favorite / Action-Adventure
6. 2026 The Bookish Reader’s Pick Award
7. 2026 Chrysalis/BREW Reader’s Choice Award
8. Fall 2025 Pinnacle Book Achievement...

Book Review: https://wp.me/p3cyvH-LSi

Author Interview - Richard Scott Sacks

Sometimes great events touch us deeply.

Drinking from the Stream follows two young men in 1971 who are on the run and attempting to escape their pasts by traveling to East Africa, where their personal reckonings unfold alongside violence. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

In June 1972 when I was twenty-two years old and hitchhiking across Africa I was sitting in a student cafeteria at the University...

January 29, 2026

*****

Drinking from the Stream follows two young Americans, Jake and Karl, whose chance meeting turns into a long, hazardous journey across East Africa in the early 1970s. What begins as flight, Jake from a violent past in Louisiana, Karl from ideological and emotional dead ends in the United States, becomes immersion. As they move through Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and beyond, their personal reckonings unfold alongside coups, ethnic violence, and the aftershocks of...

award #9 for DRINKING FROM THE STREAM

2025-2026 ACCOLADES FOR DRINKING FROM THE STREAM

1. BREW Book Excellence Award 2026 for Political Fiction
2. Pencraft Prize — Best Book for Fiction - Adventure
3. International Firebird Book Award — First Place Winner / Thriller Category
4. Independent Press Award — 2026 Distinguished Favorite / Action-Adventure
5. 2026 The Bookish Reader’s Pick Award
6. 2026 Chrysalis/BREW Reader’s Choice Award
7. Fall 2025 Pinnacle Book Achievement Award — Best Book / Literary Fiction
8. 2026...

BY RICHARD SCOTT SACKS

Best Book Winners for the 2026 Winter PenCraft Seasonal Book Awards

Best Book for Fiction - Adventure

2025-2026 ACCOLADES FOR DRINKING FROM THE STREAM

1. Pencraft Prize — Best Book for Fiction - Adventure
2. International Firebird Book Award — First Place Winner / Thriller Category
3. Independent Press Award — 2026 Distinguished Favorite / Action-Adventure
4. 2026 The Bookish Reader’s Pick Award
5. 2026 Chrysalis/BREW Reader’s Choice Award
6. Fall 2025...

1. International Firebird Book Award — First Place Winner / Thriller Category
2. Independent Press Award — 2026 Distinguished Favorite / Action-Adventure
3. 2026 The Bookish Reader’s Pick Award
4. 2026 Chrysalis/BREW Reader’s Choice Award
5. Fall 2025 Pinnacle Book Achievement Award — Best Book / Literary Fiction
6. 2026 Literary Titan Silver Book Award
7. 2025 Literary Global Book Award for Fiction — Winner / Thriller-Adventure Category

January 7, 2026

The Bookish Magazine

The Bookish, The Bookish Awards

Drinking from the Stream by Richard Scott Sacks

What would follow you across continents if memory weighed more than luggage? Drinking from the Stream by Richard Scott Sacks explores that strange burden—discover how by reading the full review.

Drinking from the Stream by Richard Scott Sacks

Genre: Fiction

Sub-genres: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Political Fiction

Themes: Moral choice, friendship, displacement, accountability...

Book Review: “Drinking from the Stream” by Richard Scott Sacks
By Mary Jones
JAN 8, 2026 #book review, #dailyprompt, #featured, #Friendship, #moral choice, #Political violence, #Reader Review, #the chrysalis brew project

What would you carry across continents if the weight wasn’t luggage but memory? Drinking from the Stream by Richard Scott Sacks explores that question—read the full review to follow where it leads.

Table of Contents

• Review
• About the Author
• ...

Award-winning news

Hi Richard Sacks,

We are honored to share the news that your book has been announced a winner in Independent Press Award. Congratulations!

The following information was provided by Independent Press Award:

Congratulations! Your book has placed as a "Distinguished Favorite" in the Independent Press Awards.

Attached are the digital seals, and your book cover with the seal attached. Permalinks, sample press release, digital certificates and banners will be sent to you by the award...

Congratulations!

Your book has been chosen as one of the NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award Winners for Fall 2025.

We have a Pinnacle Award Winners page on our website that you can visit at

Fall 2025 Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards

Thanks again for doing a great job on your book.

Happy New Year!

Al

** Congratulations!

**

We are proud to present you with the Literary Titan Book Award. Following the recent review of your book through our Book Review Service, it was automatically entered into our Literary Book Award competition. Your book deserves extraordinary praise, and we are proud to acknowledge your hard work, dedication, and writing talent. Start telling the world that you're an award-winning author because we will be!

Literary Titan Silver Book Awards

JAN 2

Posted by Literary Titan

...

Next Best Read
27 reviews 5 followers

January 1, 2026
Drinking from the Stream is an ambitious, deeply considered novel that blends personal reckoning with historical awareness in a way that feels earned and authentic. Richard Scott Sacks writes with confidence and authority, grounding the book in lived experience and intellectual curiosity, and that combination gives the narrative a strong sense of credibility. The novel asks the reader to stay engaged emotionally and intellectually, and it...

DRINKING FROM THE STREAM follows two young men on the run from themselves. The story is set in the early 1970s, a time of violent upheavals when the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Vietnam War marked a generation. Jake, a Nebraska kid turned Louisiana roughneck, flees the guilt of a killing on an oil rig. Karl, a disillusioned American student at Oxford, escapes the wreckage of the sixties and a painful relationship. Their paths cross. Together they jump on a plane to explore East Africa...

The old title, A TRIP BY CANOE, was too pedestrian, too prosaic, too unimaginative. WORLD OF WORLDS is more evocative and ambitious, and it does a better job of suggesting the actual subject matter.

A sampling from WORLD OF WORLDS:

A solitary risk-taker climbs a mountain near Europe’s highest peak;

three Australians dazzle a traveler on the Kenya coast with their financial acumen and nerve;

a desperate alcoholic in the Congo latches onto a reckless Irish newsman;

a former student protester...

Congratulations — 2025 Literary Global Book Awards Category Winner

WINNER

FICTION-THRILLER/ADVENTURE

FULL BOOK TITLE: DRINKING FROM THE STREAM

AUTHOR NAME: Richard Scott Sacks

PUBLISHER NAME: Koehler Books

Dear LGBA Category Winner,

Congratulations! We are delighted to inform you that your book has been selected as a Category Winner in the 2025 Literary Global Book Awards.

After careful review by our distinguished panel of judges, your work stood out for its exceptional craft, originality, and...

Drinking from the Stream follows two young men on the run from themselves. Jake, a Nebraska kid turned Louisiana roughneck, flees the guilt of a killing on an oil rig. Karl, a disillusioned American student at Oxford, escapes the wreckage of the sixties and a painful relationship. Their paths cross, and they drift through Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania in the early seventies, bumping into coups, massacres and love affairs as they go. The book stretches from the Gulf of Mexico...

He will render judgment upon the nations, and they will be filled with corpses; He will crush heads over a vast land. He will drink from the stream on the way and so will hold his head high.

“Cinematic, immersive, and absolutely timely. It has the bones of a cult classic."

"Drinking from the Stream isn’t just a debut novel, it’s a high-voltage cocktail of political thriller, action-adventure, and history— Vietnam, the Cultural Revolution, Africa on the cusp of transformation… a fugitive farm boy, a tortured Oxford dropout, and a dangerous plunge into dictatorship and chaos. That’s not 'just a book'… that’s a cinematic gut-punch."

"A political thriller woven with history, action,...