PEMBROKE — Author Richard Folsom will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the main reading room of Mary Livermore Library at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Folsom will talk about his latest book of historical fiction: “Indian Wood: A Mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.” The UNCP campus and an employee are mentioned in the book, as are other scenes from Robeson County and East Carolina University.

Published in August 2008, “Indian Wood” is a historical murder mystery. Folsom wrote about the murder of a professor who may have discovered a link between the Lumbee tribe and the lost colonists. Some people believe the Lumbee Indians are descended from the lost colonists of Roanoke Island.

“I wanted to tell a compelling story of what may have happened to the 116 men, women and children who went to Roanoke in 1587, and wrap it in a contemporary murder mystery to keep the readers interested,” Folsom wrote on his Web site. “... Perhaps the most significant question for the Lumbees, regarding their claim to be descended from the lost colonists, is how and why any surviving English colonists would have traveled from the Outer Banks of N.C. to settle among the swampy hummocks along Drowning Creek?”

Folsom became interested in the history of the Lumbee tribe in the 1960s when he studied history at East Carolina University.

“One of my professors, Dr. Paschal, assigned me to write a paper on the Tuscarora Indian Wars of 1711-13 ,” Folsom wrote on his Web site. “That led me to his master’s thesis on the last battle with the Tuscarora at Fort Nooherooka that took place in March of 1712 near Snow Hill, N.C. ... After writing that term paper I was hooked on N.C. Indians.”

Lisa Morgan wrote in the January 2009 issue of Our State Magazine that “Folsom cracks open America’s oldest cold case file in this spine-tingling piece of historical fiction. He presents the evidence like a well-prepared district attorney, leaving the reader guessing until the end. ‘Indian Wood’ is an exciting and intellectually stimulating journey through North Carolina’s colonial history.”