An Interview on the Anniversary of Grant's Death

Thanks to Emerging Civil War Editor in Chief Chris Mackowski (shown here in a photo I took last summer on the porch of Grant Cottage), and to the spirit of Ulysses S. Grant, for this email interview released today on the 134th anniversary of Grant's death. It is about my historical novel The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant.
He asked good questions, which helped me explain what I was trying to do. Chris has, of course, written his own nonfiction account of Grant's last days, which I would recommend to anyone.
We both write about and in the shade of the last part of Grant's life and its product, the Memoirs, a great work of history, recollection and Americana. More broadly, anyone one who writes about the Civil War, or any war, operates in the shadow of those many people lost or damaged in it, to whom we owe a certain respect and reverence, without sentimentalizing away the truth of their experience -- as far as we can work it out.