Читать книгу Quilly Hall - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 4

Not every novel requires a “Preface,” but somehow Quilly Hall mandates one. My grandmother, Catherine Foran White, a child of Virginia’s Holston Valley, never wearied of telling stories. Born in 1877, she was reared in a rural time in a rural world that modernity has since forgotten. I cannot return to Abingdon’s Holston Knobs without remembering her, or her cabin, or her rocker, or her smile, or her farm. She filled me with a wonder for life and a love for adventure and dreams. Of all my family, this book is dedicated in memory to her, and to my Uncle Clark, her middle son.

I am indebted to Dr. James R. Metts, Sheriff of Lexington County, SC, who shared with me his experiences and wisdom concerning the office of sheriff and its numerous demands, aspects of which I have dramatized in one of my character’s career. Any mistakes in fact or judgment, however, are entirely my own. So also in the case of Major Richard Daeger, US Army (Retired), Vietnam Infantry Company Commander. Major Daeger served as a line officer during the Vietnam War. It is his memories of that conflict that innerve Thomas Edmonds’ own reflections. Words cannot express the full measure of my gratitude to Major Daeger and to all who served with him.

I am beholden to many historical resources, especially to Lewis Preston Summers’ History of Southwest Virginia, 1746–1786, Washington County, 1777–1870, whose sketches of the County’s soul are preserved in his work.