Welcome to The Parting: A Story of West Point on the Eve of the Civil War, and recipient of the iUniverse STAR award for writing excellence and a five star Clarion Foreword book review.

As we enter the sesquicentennial years of the Civil War, we are reminded of the most heart-wrenching time in our nation's history when the nation was divided and families and friends, including West Point cadets, had to decide their allegiance, and having decided their allegiance would fight one another for four long years in a war that would take more than 620,000 lives. The Parting is a fact-based story that enters upon the eve of that history...  

About The Parting 

It is July 18, 1861 near Winchester, Virginia. The Civil War has begun, and Confederate Lieutenant John Pelham, formerly of the West Point Class of 1861, is about to confront his former classmates and best friends at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas).

The confident Pelham bears little resemblance to the seventeen-year-old who journeyed alone five years earlier from Jacksonville, Alabama, to West Point, New York, to enter the United States Military Academy. As the class begins its final year, Pelham meets Clara Bolton, a Philadelphian belle who captures his heart. In the months that follow, Pelham, Clara, and the Class of 1861 witness the unraveling of the Union and the birth of the Confederacy against the backdrop of slavery and states' rights, the Democratic and Republican Parties, the fire-eaters of the South, and the abolitionists of the North.