An Old Familiar Place

is only half easy— The easy part is what you know about your own personal characters. What was going on around them at the time is quite another story. Rachel, After the Darkness covers a relatively condensed timeframe, beginning in late fall of 1872 and ending in late September 1873. Research that covers a little less than a year may not seem significant, but the year 1873 was not one of those insignificant years. In fact, the drama was amazingly intense, and I wanted to cover as much as I possibly could. That year combined with Rachel's memories covering the greater part of the first decade after the War, Reconstruction, and the continuing aftermath that droned on and on makes for an incredible story. If we are smart, we will never exhaust the War years and beyond from a literary perspective. Those years were rich with important information. I'm sorry to say, I didn't know a lot about the North before I started writing historical fiction. Learni...