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Twice he challenged the lynchers
Of all the characters in Condemned for Love, Colly Pattie strikes me as one of the most interesting. Colly was witness to two lynchings, tried to stop them and failed both times. Colly was 17 and asleep in the family quarters in the county jail in Warrenton when the first lynching occurred. His father, Horace,
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A single tombstone confirms the spot
One of the curious features of Dr. Augustus Horner’s drawing of the Arthur Jordan lynching is his placement of a single tombstone in his sketch. A single tombstone in the Warrenton Cemetery? The place is enormous. Perhaps Horner meant it as representative of the many other markers there. No, Horner drew what he saw. If
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A visit to the site of Jordan’s murder
I made a promise to myself early on to be all in for this book-writing adventure, to embrace the discomfort of learning new skills. For example, I’ve had to think and rethink how to structure a 35,000-word story, how to create a worthy deck of PowerPoint slides, and how to master new computer programs. I
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Mosby chose to defend a corrupt vision
There are more than 8,000 graves in the Warrenton Cemetery, but none is as popular as the grave of Col. John S. Mosby. Mosby’s grave is a place of pilgrimage, a tribute to the famed soldier. And I don’t understand why. Mosby was a legendary Confederate cavalry officer, the “Gray Ghost,” whose guerrilla tactics bedeviled
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‘Night and Fog’ and Elvira Corder
When Steve Watkins described the German terror tactic, “Night and Fog,” I snapped to attention. Steve is a retired professor at the University of Mary Washington, the author of 12 books and a longtime friend. I sat beside his wife, Janet Watkins, for many years in the newsroom at the Free Lance-Star. Steve and I
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Hoping readers enjoy a good mystery
One of the uncomfortable moments in a newspaper reporter’s life is when you’re out somewhere, say grocery shopping at Giant, and a reader approaches. “I liked your story about my mother,” the reader might say. When this happened to me, I braced because I could hear a “but” coming. “I liked your story about my
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Evil, unrelenting evil
The research I did for Condemned for Love in Old Virginia took me to some of the darkest corners of our state’s history, places I had heard about but never explored. When a student at Germanna Community College asked me recently what surprised me most about this journey, I answered with two words, “the evil.”
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Let’s (not) talk about money
I was surprised when the librarian in Hagerstown, Md., asked about my speaking fee. That almost never happens. I have agreed to talk at the Washington County Free Library this October as part of its McCauley Lecture Program. The library is interested in Condemned for Love, my new book, because a portion of it takes
Author & Lecturer
Jim Hall 