Cover

Title Page

Copyright Notice

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Dedication

To Irene

Note

Note

It is worthy of remark that whatever astuteness Abraham Lincoln possessed as a prophet, was not reflected in his address at Gettysburg, on November 19, 1863. With all sincerity he declared, “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Seventy years later, one realizes that Lincoln’s speech represents the only common and popular knowledge of Lincoln, Gettysburg, or the war between the states.

The major characters of this novel are fictitious. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there was no one named Bale, Fanning, Huddle-stone or Duffey living in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in June or July of 1863.

M.K.

Introduction

Introduction

There are stories enough to fill great libraries—stories of marching armies, the rattle of muskets, the screams of dying men. We know so much of generals and privates, cavaliers on their fine horses, or the man leading the glorious charge up that famous hill. In these pages is quite another story, drawn with the extraordinary skill of a man who brings us into one small town, in no way unique, and into the life of one man who is considered very much unique by the peole who know him.

Dan Bale is a confirmed civilian, a man with no allegiances, who has a distinct disdain for the chest-thumping passions the Civil War has produced. He returns to the small town of his youth, a journey home for a sorrowful personal business, is searching for nothing, expects little else. He is a man disconnected from his world, a man who could be from any time. He has grown up mildly angry, journeyed far from home, seeking nothing from a life that has given him only a faint nod of kindness. He seems void of passion, annoyed at himself that somewhere in a place he tries to hide he has an inconvenient and unavoidable strain of decency. It is Dan Bale’s astounding misfortune that his return to his family home should in fact be a stumble into a place where madness and fear and the horror of death will engulf a people whose only sin is that they live in a town called Gettysburg.