HONOR COMES A PILGRIM GRAY

Honor Comes A Pilgrim Gray is a US Civil War novel based on an actual Union soldier’s diary using American realist / naturalist school overtones, color, and British gothic romance / horror elements. 

The beginning runs c. from (Prologue to) Chapter 1 to Chapter 28, 1860/1-1862/3.

Jonah (“Jack”) Chance Deltlowe begins his journey as a Union soldier from Ball’s Bluff to Fredericksburg (where he wins the Medal Of Honor in a battle of dubious honor). Deltlowe comes from ancient New England king grant landowners who’ve fallen on hard times by the Civil War’s outbreak, nearby landowning families – one of whom is his love interest’s – having swindled the Deltlowes over the centuries. All they have left of Thomas Dellough’s king’s grant is a small postage stamp of land called “The Kingdom” :  the family used to own Springs Pond nearby and, crucially, Windemere Pond. Windemere is a pond on the former Deltlowe estate now belonging to the Gantrells which both Ginny and Jack love; the war for it is “on” for the contenders of this lovely property. It is symbolic of the struggle in and between families, societies and rapidly-changing nations in turbulent political times.

Jack’s swept up in the war from his disadvantaged present, to the advantaged love interest’s (Guinneve – “Ginny”) Gantrell’s family and especially to the rich and spoiled anglophilic Brysons – this latter containing the triangle’s competitor to Ginny’s hand, Cameron Bryson. But the Gantrells, too, have fallen on relatively hard times and a promised marriage between Cameron and Ginny will seal fortunes of the scheming Amos Gantrell (Ginny’s father) and Needham Bryson (Cameron’s father) – despite Jack and Ginny’s love. Ginny, who’d hoped to go to the earliest form of what became Radcliffe College is sent to a woman’s seminary instead due to her scheming sister Charlotte’s jealous influence over her father. Ginny is to be used as a pawn to wed fortunes together and nothing more, severely limiting her talents. Another tension-adder to the love interest between Jack, Cameron, and Ginny is the handsome Rafael Falkirk Muir, Jack’s and Ginny’s friend; a romantic soldier, poet and dreamer with a fatal flaw.

Other families like e.g. the Dealys and Osgoodes also have aims to completely finish off the Deltlowes, grabbing land before this “quick war” is over. Subplots of intriguing usurpers such as e.g. Charlotte Gantrell, Ginny’s cruel sister, Needham’s old and vicious father Prebustius Lanham Bryson, and Colonel Spraugue Dundee add to conflict, complexity, and intrigue to gain safe passage for blockade running for their financial empires in the US north, south, and in England. Deflecting from the conflict are Billy, Jack’s younger brother, and their older long-lost brother Luke; Ginny’s faithful servant Auntie Mae who reassures Ginny, the platonic, strongly moral and intelligent Gantrell brother Crane – who also loves Jack – aiming to protect both, and the hapless, fated thieving -if intelligent and noble- Irish immigrant Abdiel (“Pat”) Dolan who sacrifices all. The “big picture” backdrop (backstory) of the war from perspectives of Lincoln, McClellan, Lee, Davis, Grant and others is begun in accordance with actual history from  c. 1860-1862/3 (Grant in 1848, thence to 1861).

The middle runs c. from Chapter 29 to 58, 1862/3-1864/5. 

Romantic interludes appear where Jack, now a lieutenant, woos Ginny once back home among the rich and influential families he is invited to be among due to his congressional medal. Officers from the rival families have unexpectedly fallen below Jack’s mark, except for the scheming Cameron, buoyed only by his genius for evil, and mostly assisted by Charlotte and Dundee, Dundee the evil southern prison warden-turned-war profiteer. Cameron actually manipulates the mail service so that Jack’s letters do not reach Ginny or hers, him. Mistrust upon ignorance between the lovers exacerbates their agony. Billy, who meets Jack at Antietam as a corporal is killed, and Jack swears to retrieve his body one day. Ginny’s seemingly-delicate brother Crane becomes a Union army officer in the Signal Corps, quitting Harvard. All this goes on through the Gettysburg sequence to intensify the drama, where Jack is wounded, and the travails he endures while conflicting actors still succeed, Jack imagining he sees Ginny on the battlefield, and then actually seeing her. Meanwhile, Cameron betrays a deep love for Ginny. 

But the tide is changing and everything from black and white slavery through white class privilege to very private estate ownership south -and north- gets swept away by the land reforms of 1863 along with the Emancipation Proclamation. The mighty estates both north and south days’ are numbered, the tide turns and with it, and the end of America’s first republic is colored in romantic, poetic prose. Pat “Ab” Dolan gets Jack off the Gettysburg battlefield after fourteen grueling days and leaves him a crucial note. Muir’s flaw as a gambler allows him to be blackmailed by Cameron Bryson, which saves the cowardly Major Bryson from the noose when Muir caught for being a coward at Gettysburg. 

Rafael Muir’s Confederate opposite number and look-alike, John James, who intrigued with Jack earlier in the story, kill each other at Spotsylvania Courthouse. A body mixup sends Muir to Maryland and James to Massachusetts. The irony of the opposite burials intensifies the terrific tragedy of the war, Ginny grieving over the body of a strange man. Charlotte Gantrell, Prebustius Lanham Bryson and Spraugue Dundee run the blockade for Needham Bryson in the north, furthering the ill gotten gains of the Brysons whilst Amos Gantrell – secretly hoping for his daughter’s happiness – dithers. It is starting to look desperate for not only the south, but also for the fortunes of the Gantrells, Brysons, the Osgoods, Dealys and others. But the light at the tunnel’s end isn’t seen yet by Jack and Ginny. The “big picture” backdrop (backstory) of the war from perspectives of Lee, Grant, Lincoln and others is continued in accordance with actual history from c. 1862/3-1863/4/5 as Grant takes total command of the Union army.

The end runs c. from Chapter 59 to 87  (to Epilogue) 1864-1866 / 2009. 

War has improved the economy of Jack’s threadbare family in Massachusetts. Getting back in the army after recommissioning, Grant’s Overland Campaign sends Jack Deltlowe headlong into southern prisons upon his capture at Cold Harbor. For nearly ten months he is on the run from various officer prisons in Georgia, South Carolina, and elsewhere. Staying faithful, escaping again, Jack is suddenly captured by Texas Rangers acting as military police in Georgia; the Rangers’ sergeant is none other than Jack’s long-lost brother Luke. For awhile, Spraugue Dundee and even Charlotte Gantrell take turns punishing Jack at recapture as they squeeze likely captured Union officers routinely for booty and influence – cruel Charlotte revealing her strange love for Jack.  But Jack manages to get away again with Luke’s unexpected help. 

Grant’s using prisoners of war to laden the southern logistics command guaratees a speedier end to the war as Charlotte, Prebustius Bryson and Spraugue Dundee’s plots come to nought while the southern economy collapses. Dundee is caught and is used to lure Cameron Bryson by now-brigadier general Crane Gantrell, risen to the judge advocate’s general due to his probity. Crane is on to all of Cameron’s and the other plotting families’ plots. Crane, revealing the scheme of the blockade runners into his own family after finding mail fraud from Cameron (witholding Ginny and Jack’s letters) captures the agents behind the blockade running ring, including Needham, his own father – and brother (Bret). 

Jack is finally released from Confederate prisons in March, and spends time recuperating in Connecticut. Charlotte who feigned sucide in South Carolina reappears seeking Jack in Connecticut. Cameron Bryson escapes with Dundee, the plot to catch him using treasury agents by Crane failing (they flee west and south respectively). Prebustius and Needham are killed. Amos, protected by Crane, is reunited with Ginny. The rest are in jail.

Jack is mustered in and out of the army twice, is afraid to return to Massachusetts, but once he does, finds that Ginny, Crane and Amos have lost their estates (as have the Brysons and others) him thinking like Crane that Cameron is dead. Jack, going through his military things, finds Pat “Abdiel” Dolan’s Gettysburg note on his pilgrimage to retrieve Billy’s body in Pennsylvania (with the plan to visit Ginny and Crane at Crane’s duty base in Washington). He discovers that the note is actually a treasure map showing where war-booty from the fleeced dead and wounded at Gettysburg is buried. The “big picture” backdrop (backstory) of the war from perspectives of Lincoln, Lee, and Grant ends in accordance with actual history from  c. 1863/4-1865.

The 1866-2009 sequence stops with Jack’s getting the unclaimed booty with Luke’s unexpected help. The reader recreates in their imagination how Jack and Luke help bolster the Deltlowe family due to telescoping into the future, where ancestor Ann Deltlow in 2009 is introduced.  The 2009 (Epilogue) shows Jack’s great granddaughter, Pennsylvanian Ann Deltlow – an army officer – further tracing her “old Yankee” roots in Massachusetts. As she does so, she reconstructs the life Jack and Ginny lived (at The Kingdom, and Windemere Pond, which they presumably purchased back in 1866) sees the nearly vanished “Kingdom” and the Deltlow graves, the Gantrell manor home they renamed “Dolan House” and – scarily – the military-historian Ann’s mistake when reading poetry off a civil war grave!

Please ask any interested parties to review it online at Amazon.com.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Steven-Haywood-Yaskell/407976212610290

Cordially,

Steven Haywood Yaskell

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FIRST RELEASES

THE FLIGHT OF THE FURIES          

By WILLIAM WISTER

 

THE FLIGHT OF THE FURIES

The most powerful and dangerous man alive must be delivered from the clutches of Nazi re-occupied Denmark to America.

Why is he most powerful and dangerous? Because both the allies and Nazis know that only he can tip the world’s military power balance by achieving the first atomic bomb.

The Danish Nobel Prize winning father of the radiative subatomic world was both teacher and inspiration to a generation of nuclear scientists trapped half a world away. Now these same scientists -many who fled Nazi Europe -desperately need his help.

Based on fact, this Ian Fleming-style historical thriller makes readers relive the hidden world of World War 2’s mysterious “secret war” when the scientist’s deliverance from Fascist Europe is reenacted. As the two “furies,” natural flier Lieutenant Michael McKnight and the Danish physicist soar precariously to freedom in a futuristic high-altitude aircraft, the love of a man for a beautiful woman simmers. If it wasn’t for the downed American bomber co-pilot McKnight, yoked into spy service and a female scientist – the breathtakingly beautiful Swedish Nazi trophy wife Lydia Öfverberg – the history of the world might have taken a different turn. 

WILLIAM WISTER

Notes On the Writing

Author’s Note: Honor Comes A Pilgrim Gray

The book is a work of fiction built partly off prison diary compilations kept by US Civil War veteran Captain John G.B.(Gregory Bishop) Adams and from his memories throughout the war far after he won his Medal Of Honor in 1862, in 1899, published by Wright, Potter Printing Co in the form of “reminscences.”

The notes and memories were worked into a loose string of events standing out to him within his war experience from 1861-1865. The published material was titled Reminiscenses of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment  By CAPT. John G.B. Adams. The publisher was a state government printer that operated from 1648-2007, which might have defrayed the costs for Adams, as he was employed as the Sergeant At Arms in the Massachusetts state house near this time and so, was a state employee. Adams received his medal on December 16, 1896, 34 years after his citation for heroic action at Fredericksburg.

Reminiscences is dense, mostly notational only, and unedited, loosely following happenstance series’ of events that stood out to Adams across the 45 battles and skirmishes the 19^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry endured over, as Adams put it, “four long, weary years.” He claims he doesn’t speak for all the men in the regiment and indeed, being first badly wounded at Gettysburg, and then in various captive/on the run states for many months till war’s end, he wasn’t in every action. Of particular note is his extended times alternately escaping and enduring Confederate officer prisons, which for him lasted nearly 10 months. What is noteworthy is that, unlike many other regiments who paid professional ghostwriters to scribe sententious Victorian hagiographies, Reminiscences was straight from the heart, brief (c. 140 pages) and from sharp memory of one in the “working class” regiments participating in that war, the brunt of such regiments having fought out the hard parts and won the difficult actions (as usually is the case with Americans at war). Some of the historical events he records are shocking, even for today’s readers. Adams did  speak, somewhat, for the men who perished or transferred to the 19th, apparently voted in as one of the Civil War’s “Fightingest.” It was just as well: he was one of its few survivors of it from beginning to end, private to captain. Out of 800, just around 100 lived in some fashion after the war to witness the uneasy peace. As the Adjutant-General wrote in 1865 of the 19^th: “in six (of its total of 45 engagements) it…lost from one-third to five-sixths of its men” (noted by Adams in the text).

Adams wrote, 

I sincerely hope the publicaton of this volume will inspire other comrades and that from the memories thus evoked some one may gather further material whereby the deeds of the men who so bravely followed the flags of the State and Nation…may be preserved.

The few who survived had treated the war like a tough job to get through; they never met for the July 4^th 1865 parade.

I had planned to write a story someday based on these Reminiscences as early as 1970, when John’s compilation could be pulled straight down off the stacks in the history section of my hometime library. It helped form a lasting bond between me and that working town community (Peabody Ma.) visiting the graves of some of the fallen he mentioned in his text, and my own continuous grappling with history, of which I became a vetted and published biographer (science history). By the time I approached the subject seriously in 2006 to begin sketching Honor Comes A Pilgrim Gray as my first fiction work using historical biography, only one (precious and hard-to-get-to-examine) copy of  “Captain Jack’s” reminiscences existed near (not in) my hometown Peabody’s library and, by freak happenstance, came upon parts of it on the web, getting a .PDF copy from a librarian in Queensland, Australia. She’d read the memoir and published parts of it on Internet, moved as she was by the section on Gettysburg. How did she get such a rare book, moved so far from its source? As she related, an American army general in World War 2 wished to make a cultural exchange by presenting Australia with books on American history!

To novel-ize the story for a wider audience, a romance was invented involving multifarious male and female characters in the Bronte/Austin style, with Hawthorne and Poe thrown in to give it an American twist. The large back story of the “big picture” of the war involving Lincoln, Grant, Lee and all the others is, personally, my stronger suit, and is as strictly-held to the actual history as got from the writers below as was possible for a vetted historical researcher to achieve.

But as usual, the interpretation of what some of the characters thought and how they interacted was left to my imagination. I tried not to stray far from the facts.

Books directly used to create main and back stories  (essays, articles scholarly or otherwise, indirect sources not counted)

Thirty seven books / memoirs (37) were researched / read in six categories across 20 + years for enabling the novel’s back story.

Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln and the Union, by Oscar and Lilian Handlin

Abraham Lincoln In His Own Words, ed. Maureen Harrison and Steve Gilbert

Lincoln At Gettysburg, by Gary Wills

Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln As Commander In Chief, by James McPherson

Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, by Carl Sandburg

Grant (and Grant/Lee):

The Generals: Ulysseus S, Grant and Robert E. Lee, by Nancy and Dwight Anderson

The Mask Of Command (“Grant and Unheroic Leadership”) by John Keegan

Grant, by William S. McFeely

Grant (Great General Series, U.S. War College) by John Mosier (ed. General Wesley Clark

Grant Takes Command, by Bruce Catton (based on painstaking research by Lloyd Lewis)

Grant Moves South, by Bruce Catton (Ditto)

Captain Sam Grant, by Lloyd Lewis

Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs

Lee:

Reading The Man: A Portrait Of Robert E. Less Through His Private Letters, by Elizabeth Brown Pryor

Lee: The Last Years, by Charles B. Flood

Civil War – specific (history non fiction):

Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Regiment, by CAPT. John G.B. Adams 

The Civil War (Volumes 1-3) by Shelby Foote

For Cause and Comrades, by James McPherson

They Who Fought Here, by Bell I. Wiley and Hirst D. Mulhollen

Mother May You Never See The Sights I Have Seen: The 57th Massachusetts Veteran Volunteers in the Last Year Of the Civil War, by Warren Wilkerson (Master’s thesis)

Reflections On the Civil War, by Bruce Catton

Conceived in Liberty, by Mark Perry

The Passing Of the Armies, by Joshua Chamberlain

Rebel Private Front and Rear, by William A. Fletcher

Walt Whitman (relevant Civil War selections)

Hospital Sketches, by Louisa May Alcott

Civil War: General Studies:

A History Of the American People, by Paul Johnston

A History Of Warfare, by John Keegan

Warpaths: Travels Of A Military Historian In North America, by John Keegan

Classics Of Civil War Fiction, Ed. David Madden and Peggy Bach

Civil War Fiction:

Andersonville, by McKinlay Kantor

Raintree County, by Ross Lockridge Jr.

The Confessions Of Nat Turner, by William Styron

The Wave, by Evelyn Scott

The Long Roll, by Mary Johnston (Jackson’s movements in the Shenandoah)

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

Honor Comes a Pilgrim Gray

Honor Comes A Pilgrim Gray is a US Civil War novel based on an actual Union soldier’s diary using American realist / naturalist school overtones, color, and British gothic romance / horror elements.

The beginning runs c. from (Prologue to) Chapter 1 to Chapter 28, 1860/1-1862/3.

Jonah (“Jack”) Chance Deltlowe begins his journey as a Union soldier from Ball’s Bluff to Fredericksburg (where he wins the Medal Of Honor in a battle of dubious honor).

Deltlowe comes from ancient New England king’s grant land owners who’ve fallen on hard times by the Civil War’s outbreak, nearby landowning families – one of whom is his love interest’s – having swindled the Deltlowes over the centuries. All they have left of Thomas Dellough’s king’s grant is a small postage stamp of land they call “The Kingdom.” The family once owned the Springs Pond nearby and, crucially, Windemere Pond. Windemere is a pond on the former Deltlowe estate now belonging to the Gantrells which both he and his girlfriend Ginny love.

Jack’s swept up in the war from his disadvantaged present, to the advantaged love interest’s (Guinneve – “Ginny”) Gantrell’s family and especially to the rich and spoiled anglophilic Brysons – this latter containing the triangle’s competitor to Ginny’s hand, Cameron Bryson.

But the Gantrells, too, have fallen on relatively hard times and a promised marriage between Cameron and Ginny will seal fortunes of the scheming Amos Gantrell (Ginny’s father) and Needham Bryson (Cameron’s father) – despite Jack and Ginny’s love. Ginny, who’d hoped to go to the new woman’s college in Cambridge, is sent to a woman’s seminary instead due to her scheming sister Charlotte’s jealous influence over her father. Ginny is to be used as a pawn to wed fortunes together and nothing more, severely limiting her talents. Another tension-adder to the love interest between Jack, Cameron, and Ginny is the handsome Rafael Falkirk Muir, Jack’s and Ginny’s friend; a romantic soldier, poet and dreamer with a fatal flaw.

Other families like the Dealys and Osgoodes also have aims to completely finish off the Deltlowes, grabbing land before this “quick war” is over. Subplots of intriguing usurpers such as e.g. Charlotte Gantrell, Ginny’s cruel sister, Needham’s old and vicious father Prebustius Lanham Bryson, and Colonel Spraugue Dundee add to conflict, complexity, and intrigue to gain safe passage for blockade running for their financial empires in the US north, south, and in England. Deflecting from the conflict are Billy, Jack’s younger brother and their older long-lost brother, Luke; Ginny’s faithful servant Auntie Mae who reassures Ginny, the platonic strongly moral and intelligent Gantrell brother Crane who aims to protect both, and the hapless, fated thieving -if intelligent and noble- Irish immigrant Abdiel (“Pat”) Dolan who sacrifices all. The “big picture” back story of the war from perspectives of Lincoln, McClellan, Lee, Davis, Grant and others is begun in accordance with actual history from  c. 1860-1862/3 (Grant in 1848, thence to 1861).

The middle runs c. from Chapter 29 to 58, 1862/3-1864/5. 

Romantic interludes appear where Jack, now a lieutenant, woos Ginny once back home among the rich and influential families he is invited to be among due to his congressional medal. Officers from the rival families have unexpectedly fallen below Jack’s mark, except for the scheming Cameron, buoyed only by his genius for evil, and mostly assisted by Charlotte and Dundee, Dundee the evil southern prison warden-turned-war profiteer. Cameron actually manipulates the mails so that Jack’s letters do not reach Ginny or hers, him. Mistrust upon ignorance between the lovers exacerbates their agony. Billy, who meets Jack at Antietam as a corporal, is killed, and Jack swears to retrieve his body one day. Ginny’s seemingly-delicate brother Crane becomes a Union army officer in the Signal Corps after graduating from Harvard. All this goes on through the Gettysburg sequence to intensify the drama, where Jack is wounded, and the travails he endures while conflicting actors still succeed, Jack imagining he sees Ginny on the battlefield, and then, actually seeing her. Meanwhile, Cameron betrays his own love for Ginny. 

But the tide is changing and everything from black and white slavery through white class privilege to very private estate ownership south -and north- gets swept away by the land reforms of 1863 along with the Emancipation Proclamation. The days of the first mighty estates both north and south are numbered, the tide turns, and with it, and the end of America’s first republic is colored in sentimental literary tones: this America will never be seen again, a bane for some; a blessing for many.

Pat “Ab” Dolan gets Jack off the Gettysburg battlefield after fourteen grueling days and leaves him a crucial note. Muir’s flaw as a gambler allows him to be blackmailed by Cameron Bryson, which saves the cowardly Major Bryson from the noose when Muir caught him acting the coward at Gettysburg. 

Muir’s Confederate opposite and look-alike John James, who had intrigues with Jack, kill each other at the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse. A body mixup sends Muir to Maryland and James to Massachusetts. The irony of the opposite burials intensifies the terrific tragedy of the war, Ginny grieving over the body of a strange man. Charlotte Gantrell, Prebustius Lanham Bryson and Spraugue Dundee run the blockade for Needham Bryson in the north, furthering the spread of ill gotten gains of the Brysons whilst Amos Gantrell – secretly hoping for his daughter’s happiness – dithers. It is starting to look desperate for not only the south, but also for the fortunes of the Gantrells, Brysons, the Osgoods; Dealys and others. But the light at the tunnel’s end isn’t seen yet by Jack and Ginny. The “big picture” back story of the war from perspectives of Lee, Grant, Lincoln and others is continued in accordance with actual history from c. 1862/3-1863/4/5 as Grant takes total command of the Union army.

The end runs c. from Chapter 59 to 87  (to Epilogue) 1864-1866 / 2009. 

War has improved the economy of Jack’s threadbare family in Massachusetts.

Getting back in the army after recommissioning, Grant’s Overland Campaign sends Jack Deltlowe headlong into southern prisons upon his capture at Cold Harbor. For nearly ten months he is on the run from various officer prisons in Georgia, South Carolina, and elsewhere. Escaping again, Jack is suddenly captured by Texas Rangers acting as military police in Georgia; the Rangers’ sergeant is none other than Jack’s long-lost brother Luke. For awhile, Spraugue Dundee and even Charlotte Gantrell take turns punishing Jack at recapture as they squeeze vulnerable Union officers routinely for booty and influence – Charlotte revealing her strange love for Jack.  She turns on him, yet, Jack manages to get away once again with Luke’s unexpected help. 

Grant’s using prisoners of war to laden the southern logistics command guaratees a speedier end to the war as Charlotte, Prebustius Bryson and Spraugue Dundee’s plots come to nought while the southern economy collapses.

Dundee is caught and is used to lure Cameron Bryson by now-brigadier general Crane Gantrell, risen to the judge advocate’s general due to his probity. Judge Cantrell is on to all of Cameron’s and the other plotting families’ plots. Crane, revealing the scheme of the blockade runners into his own family after finding mail fraud from Cameron (witholding Ginny and Jack’s letters) captures the agents behind the blockade running ring, including Needham, and his own father and brother (Bret). 

Jack is finally released from Confederate prisons in March 1865, and spends time recuperating in Connecticut, then Rhode Island. Charlotte who feigned sucide in South Carolina reappears seeking Jack in Connecticut. Cameron Bryson escapes with Dundee, the plot to catch him using treasury agents by Crane failing (they flee west and south respectively). Prebustius and Needham are killed. Amos, protected by Crane, is reunited with Ginny. The rest are in jail.

Jack is mustered in and out of the army twice, is afraid to return to Massachusetts, but once he does, finds that Ginny, Crane and Amos have lost their estates (as have the Brysons) him thinking like Crane that Cameron is dead. His own “61’er” regiment is yoked unfairly to another, lesser-serving one: their history gets overwritten. Dilatorily Jack, going through his military things, finds Pat “Abdiel” Dolan’s note on his pilgrimage to retrieve Billy’s body in Pennsylvania (with the plan to visit Ginny and Crane at Crane’s duty base in Washington). He discovers that the note is actually a treasure map showing where war-booty from the fleeced dead and wounded at Gettysburg is buried. The “big picture” back story of the war from perspectives of Lincoln, Lee, and Grant ends in accordance with actual history from  c. 1863/4-1865.

The 1866-2009 sequence stops with Jack’s getting the unclaimed booty with Luke’s unexpected help.

The reader recreates in their imagination how Jack and Luke help bolster the Deltlowe family due to telescoping into the future, where Jack and Ginny’s ancestor Ann Deltlow in 2009 is introduced.  The 2009 (Epilogue) shows Jack’s great granddaughter Pennsylvanian Ann Deltlow – an army officer – further tracing her “old Yankee” roots in Massachusetts.

As she does so, she reconstructs the life Jack and Ginny lived (at The Kingdom, and Windemere Pond, which they presumably purchased back in 1866) sees the nearly vanished “Kingdom” and the Deltlow graves, the Gantrell manor home they renamed “Dolan House” and – scarily – the military-historian Ann’s mistake when reading poetry off a civil war grave – Rafael Falkirk Muir’s.

WILLIAM WISTER

William Wister is Steven Haywood Yaskell, published historical biography writer and world authority on British scientist E. Walter Maunder. He introduces William Wister in this blog as the historical fiction author of Honor Comes A Pilgrim Gray – a Civil War romance based on a real story – that took sixteen years in the making, with over forty volumes researched for accuracy in the backstory. At the same time, The Flight Of the Furies is introduced, a World War 2 tale of similar vintage.