THE LAST OF WHAT I AM by Abigail Cutter - Spotlight

 

The America Civil war was a four-year war (1861-65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The war began primarily as a result of the North and South's different views on slavery. The bloodiest was three days of fighting at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania when 51,000 men were either killed, wounded or missing in action. Eventually the South surrendered and President Abraham Lincoln delivered the infamous Gettysburg Address.

THE LAST OF WHAT I AM (UnionSquaer&Co.) by Abigail Cutter is a haunting and beautifully written novel about a Confederate soldier whose own personal war follows him into the afterlife— until one fateful day when his encounters with a modern-day couple change everything.

A ghost in his deserted childhood home in Virginia, Tom Smiley can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, nor can he shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defense of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early twenty-first century, trouble erupts—and Tom is forced not only to face his own terrible secret but also to come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history.

He finds an unexpected ally in the house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, whose discoveries will have momentous consequences for them both.

Abigail Cutter started out as an artist/printmaker with a MFA from George Washington University, but during a long stint at the National Endowment for the Humanities, she developed a deep love of American history. 

She married a man who came with 200 acres and an 18^th century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The farmhouse came with a very active ghost that inspired this book. 

She currently lives at both the farm and in the small town of Waterford, VA with her husband, a black labrador named Emma, and a cat that bites named Barnibi.