I want to extend my thanks for the numerous entertaining hours you’ve given me reading your books. I also want to commend you for the research and attention to detail that you pay toward the historical events in your novels. I’ve walked many of the Civil War battlefields throughout Virginia, as well as Antietam and Gettysburg, and your descriptions of those places in the Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles are just spot-on and easily evoke many memories of my own visits there. I’m curious though as to why you chose to kill off the character of Adam Faulconer in such a casual manner. I admit it was a clever means of explaining the mystery of how Lee’s orders fell into Union hands, but I thought that Adama served a valuable role as Starbuck’s moral touchstone and counterpoint, and the character still had a lot of potential. It was also evocative of the famous friendship between Confederate Gen. Lew Armistead and Union Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock who were great friends before the war but ended up facing each other from opposite sides of the battlefield at Gettysburg. I had actually come to expect that Starbuck would one day find himself facing a similar poignant situation with Adama. After all, it was the division of family and friends on opposite sides of the conflict that made the Civil War such a human tragedy. Dana Martin