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Handwriting so bad even AI can’t crack it
It happens often, as it did this month in Hagerstown, Md., when a person asked me, “What about Elvira? What happened to her?” Elvira and her disappearance are the most mysterious aspect of the Arthur Jordan story. For me, however, Dr. Gustavus Horner has second place locked down. As I recounted in Condemned for Love,
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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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I wish I’d said that
One of the curious aspects of book publishing occurs toward the end of the process, when the publisher sends you copies of the pages of your new book. The pages look exactly as they will in the finished book. The author’s job is to read them one more time and sign a statement saying that
Author & Lecturer
Jim Hall 