Yet in the Land of the Living

Long: Yet in the Land of the Living, a work of contemporary/historical fiction, takes us into protagonist GRACE STOREY'S deep dive into dual mysteries about her great-great-grandfather and a contemporary soldier injured in Iraq. Grace's search arises both out of empathy and an attempt to come to terms with her own devastating losses of her mother, brother, and husband. The novel is structured around Grace's interpretation of her ancestor's Civil War letters to his waiting wife in order to find the "truth" of not only the past but in the meaning of life and death. Thematically about the journeys we take in order to deal with suffering and tragedies, the novel offers alternative versions of the climatic events as Grace continues to recast meaning and herself, gaining strength through her search and discoveries. Although her grief from cascading personal losses initially makes her feel unable to cope, she comes out stronger for having explored those emotional landscapes, landscapes symbolic of the country's wars with itself. In her state of melancholy, she becomes emotionally detached from her husband who walks out on her. Working through an unexpected divorce in the midst of reflections on death and the meaning of life, Grace's search takes her into a cache of her great-great-grandfather's Civil War letters. Reading the letters begins as a diversion and then turns into revelations. Reconstructing identity is one of the themes of this novel on levels both personal and societal in scale. The stories Grace examines are suggested through other voices she imagines, in addition to hers. Among important characters are badly wounded Iraq war vet TIM FITZGERALD, whom Grace meets during her volunteer work at the VA. Their relationship grows into something unexpected. In the course of their developing friendship, she is simultaneously looking into the mystery of what happened to her ancestor, Civil War soldier EZRA CROSS and why he never returned home from the war. As Grace considers possible outcomes for the great-great grandfather, we find Cross repeatedly boarding a train for home, each time with an altered destiny Grace construes for him. The letters Grace studies are actual Civil War artifacts belonging to the author and acknowledged in the manuscript epigraph. All other aspects of the work, including the characters' names and outcomes, are fiction. Grace is connected to both of these American soldiers in vastly different times and wars-one by blood and the other by choice-as she becomes stronger and no longer emotionally paralyzed. The stories are representative of the American landscape damaged by profound losses through wars, both internal and external. The title of the novel, as well as chapter headings, are lines taken from the Civil War soldier's letters home to his wife Susa, uncovered by the reader as Grace reads each one during her research. Yet in the Land of the Living is structured around Grace's pursuit and interpretation of her ancestor's letters in order to find the "truth" of not only the past but in the meaning of life and death. Thematically about the journeys we take in order to deal with tragedies, the novel offers alternative versions of the climatic events as Grace continues to recast meaning and herself.