Revisiting a time of conflict

If there is one thing I like about researching a new book, it is learning about people, places, and times I have never met or experienced. I particularly like seeing a historical period through the eyes of the people who lived in that period.

This is especially true when exploring significant eras and events, such as World War II, which was a backdrop for The Mine, Mercer Street, Hannah's Moon, and Indian Paintbrush, and the American Civil War, which will be the primary setting for my next work.



In October, I began reintroducing myself to a conflict that claimed 600,000 lives and forged a modern nation. Though I had read or watched many of the works at least once before, I enjoyed them nonetheless. I expect to peruse many more before I begin writing the first novel of my fourth series, set mostly in Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia in early 1865.

Some of the less familiar sources -- like Abraham Lincoln: A History by John M. Hay and John George Nicolay, Mary Boykin Chesnut's Civil War Diary from Dixie, and The Lady Nurse of Ward E by Amanda Akin Stearns -- are in the public domain and available online. All three were produced by individuals with a front-row seat to history. Filmmaker Ken Burns cited Chesnut's diary often in his epic 1990 television series, The Civil War, which I revisited in September.

I have also begun reading more recently published books, like A Guide to Civil War Washington, D.C.: the Capital of the Union by Lucinda Prout Janke, The Willard Hotel: An Illustrated History by Richard Wallace Carr and Marie Pinak Carr, and The Civil War in Spotsylvania County: Confederate Campfires at the Crossroads by Michael Aubrecht.

My next work, the first in a new time-travel saga, will follow a modern family from 2021 to the final three months of the Civil War and focus on the civilian side. Though most of the characters will be fictional, a few, such as Abraham Lincoln, Robert Lincoln, John Hay, Edwin Stanton, and John Wilkes Booth, will not. I learned more about Robert Lincoln, the president's oldest son, and Hay, one of his secretaries, by reading Jason Emerson's Giant in the Shadows and John Taliaferro's All the Great Prizes, the definitive works on the two men.

I hope to begin writing the first draft in January and publish by June. (Photo: Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)