I

In 1992, I spent much of my free time planning a murder.

I mapped it out it out to the last detail: victim, weapon, motive, opportunity, covering the tracks, the whole meticulous homicidal mess. In the end, it went almost exactly according to plan, and was a complete success.

Almost.

Fortunately for all concerned, the murder was fictional: the plot of a mystery novel, Murder Among Friends, published in 1993. It sold out two printings; that was the successful part.

But I’m remembering it now for a different reason. One of its central plot elements, indeed the underlying theme — the reason I wrote it —was not the homicide, but the context: the murder was a portent, a forerunner of a larger real-life conflict, with a grim history and an ominous future. I could feel it coming then; two decades later, long after the novel ended with this part unresolved, it has moved from fiction to perilously close to fact.

Its history was our American Civil War (the first one): my tale was set in one of its most contested killing fields, the splendid and fertile Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, near Winchester. The Valley was fought over repeatedly, and changed hands between Blue and Grey dozens of times. Today its landscape is dotted with battlefield memorials and war cemeteries.

It seemed an apt locale for early warnings of a potential repeat catastrophe. Further, the Valley had the other feature I wanted for my story: a long and turbulent, but little-known Quaker presence.

Continue reading “Prophetic & Scary” — A Quaker Mystery from 1993 That “Foretold” the Course of U.S. History Til Today →