Pat Montella has a going nowhere job when she is summoned to Virginia by 91-year old Magnolia Shelby, who wants to bequeath her property. What unfolds is a modern mystery surrounding the Civil War. Well-written, yet not pedantic, I found it thoroughly entertaining. It was also very affecting (I dashed away a tear or two) without waltzing off into schmaltziness.
Among other things, I imagined two of my own ancestors facing each other from opposite sides of the battleground. Papa Ed (my maternal grandfather) was from Kentucky, with a long family history of westward migration from what was the Virginia Territory. Nani (my maternal grandmother) went back to New York and Pennsylvania via the midwest. Both had ancestors who fought. My various genealogical meanderings are another story, but I thought the following picture appropriate. I am not sure who , precisely, it is–but suspect it to be a brother of David Leonard Hoover (my great great great grandfather) and taken in or near Hennepin, Illinois.
