Shades of Gray: A Novel of the Civil War in Virginia
Page 57
“Alex! Oh, at last.”
By the time Daniel turned back, a peaceful smile had settled upon her face.
She was gone. Gone where her soul longed to be.
* * *
Twenty miles away, Isaac Carter stole away from a dinner party and retreated to a far window.
“Something wrong?” William Pierce came up behind him, sipping from a glass of brandy.
“I believe she has passed on,” Carter said calmly. “They are reunited.”
“Why do you say such a thing?” Pierce’s voice was full of distress. “I know she is very ill, but—”
“She did not die of the fever, Mr. Pierce,” Carter said knowingly. “She succumbed to a wound of the heart.”
Just then two dazzling flashes of lightning lit the sky, streaking and forking with brilliant intensity toward each other, until they touched and exploded into a violent roll of thunder that shook the windows in their casings and seemed to cause the entire house to tremble.
“Strange time of year for a thunderstorm.” Will stared out the window at the incredible celestial display with a puzzled look on his face, while other guests joined him to witness the strange autumn weather. “And that with no rain.”
“It’s no storm,” Carter said, with a hint of a smile on his face.
“Sparks are flying in heaven.”
He turned back around to face Pierce and repeated the words, taking silent reassurance in the rapture of united spirits.
“Sparks are flying in heaven.”
Like happy endings? Read NOBLE CAUSE, a new version of SHADES OF GRAY with a happily-ever-after ending.
Noble Cause Awards
2012 Bronze winner Foreword Magazine Book of the Year in Romance category
2011 John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction
2011 USA "Best Books 2011" Finalist in Historical Fiction
2011 Next Generation Indie Award for Best Regional Fiction
2011 Next Generation Indie Finalist in Romance category
2011 Next Generation Indie Finalist in Historical Fiction category
2011 NABE Pinnacle Book Achievement Award
To the Reader
Though he may seem an exceptional and iconic character, Colonel Alexander Hunter is no more remarkable than thousands of other citizen soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the War for Southern Independence.
In fact, the inspiration for his character came from the real life exploits of Colonel John S. Mosby of the 43rd Virginia Cavalry—Mosby’s Rangers.
Mosby and his band of recruits terrorized the Federal army in northern Virginia from 1863 to 1865. Like the fictional Hunter, Mosby grew into a myth, effectively using terror as his weapon of choice and surprise as his watchword. The Yankees believed that Mosby and his band of outlaws appeared and disappeared with the mist, that when they arrived they made no sounds, and when they departed they left no tracks.
Today, travelers on Route 50 (John Mosby Highway) in Virginia can still enjoy the beautiful vistas and quaint towns and villages where Mosby and his Rangers once roamed.
I hope you enjoyed Shades of Gray, and more importantly, that you will want to read more abut the brave men and women who believed that honor and principles were worth defending at all costs.
Surely there is something in all of us that longs to return to a time when faith in God and duty to county were noble ambitions, and when love endured as long as the spirit of life remained.
Jessica James
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