This under-appreciated battle is a focal point of a new historical fiction "Two Brothers - One North, One South."
Our speaker this month is author David H. Jones, who will discuss in detail Grant's Overland Campaign of 1864 and the Petersburg Campaign which culminated in the successful Sixth Corps Assault that decisively broke the Confederate lines and caused the fall of Richmond and the Confederacy. Jones' novel spans four years in the midst of America's costliest and most commemorated war.
The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended. As fate has it, William's brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well.
This part of the novel is true as Walt Whitman spent considerable time at the bedside of William Prentiss. David guides the reader seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.
David H. Jones was born and raised in West Virginia, and has been a lifelong student of the Civil War. He has ancestors who fought with the 6th Maryland Infantry and the 10th West Virginia Infantry. A graduate of Babson College, former Navy officer, and entrepreneur, he currently lives and writes in Los Angeles.
Come join us in learning how Mr. Jones' in-depth genealogical research resulted in the telling of this story of brother against brother.
Janet Whaley
Program ChairReturn to Home Page