Seeking A Second Opinion James Rada, Jr. Lou Preston set aside his great-grandfather’s leather-bound journal, its cracked spine and yellowed pages whispering of decades past. Harley Preston had plunged into a Civil War conspiracy so obscure that no historian had ever glimpsed it—secret peace negotiations between Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. That lack of recognition…

4: The Visitor James Rada, Jr. Lou Preston slept uneasily. Four generations of Prestons had lived in this house on the edge of the Gettysburg battlefield, sometimes overlapping with as many as three generations living here at one time. They had gotten under each others’ feet. They had gotten on each others’ nerves. They knew…

3: Becoming a Spy Lou Preston eased into his high-backed leather chair, the supple hide yielding under his weight as the morning sun slanted through the lace curtains of his Gettysburg study. Motes of dust drifted in golden beams, swirling above stacks of books and papers. He’d spent decades in this room—first immersed in research,…

James Rada, Jr. 2: Peace Negotiations Lou Preston perched on the creaking attic floorboards of his family’s weathered house, just south of Gettysburg. Sunlight slanted through a dusty dormer window and illuminated the motes dancing in the stale air. He swept his gaze over the tangle of moth-eaten furniture, battered cardboard boxes, and heaps of…

1: Inheritance Armies had marched past the simple large two-story home in Gettysburg, their boots trampling the grass into dirt and then mud on the third day of the battle. Soldiers, both Union and Confederate, had died in the back yard and the front yard, their final breaths drawn beneath the shade of ancient oaks.…