The day my life changed started out like any other. It was a hot August afternoon in 1864, the weather so oppressive that even the flies stopped swarming around the barn. The servants' children, who usually played wild games and shrieked as they ran from one chore to another, were silent. The air was still, as if holding off on a long-awaited thunderstorm. I'd planned to spend a few hours riding my horse, Mezzanotte, into the cool forest on the edge of Veritas Estate--my family home. I'd packed my satchel with a book and was intent on simply escaping. That was what I'd been doing most days that summer. I was seventeen and restless, ready neither to join the war alongside my brother nor to have Father teach me to run the estate. Every afternoon, I had the same hope: that several hours of solitude would help me figure out who I was and what I wanted to become. My time at the Boys Academy had ended last spring, and Father had made me hold off on enrolling at the University of Virginia until the war had ended. Since then, I'd been curiously stuck in the in-between. I was no longer a boy, not quite a man, and utterly unsure of what to do with myself. The worst part was that I had no one to talk to. Damon, my brother, was with General Groom's army down in