The Last of What I Am
A Novel
A haunting and beautifully written novel about a Confederate soldier whose own personal war follows him into the afterlife — until one fateful day when his encounters with a modern-day couple change everything.
A ghost in his deserted childhood home in Virginia, Tom Smiley can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, nor can he shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defence of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early twenty-first century, trouble erupts — and Tom is forced not only to face his own terrible secret but also to come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history. He finds an unexpected ally in the house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, whose discoveries will have momentous consequences for them both.
'A searing, brilliant, moving, and utterly original Civil War novel, told by the guilt-ravaged Virginia infantryman Tom Smiley whose own war never ended — at least not until a young couple move into his now-historic childhood home and start renovating...A stirring meditation on guilt and redemption.' — Lee Smith, New York Times best-selling author of The Last Girls
Abigail Cutter started out as an artist/printmaker with an MFA from George Washington University, but she quickly developed a deep love of American history. She married a man who came with an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The farmhouse came with a very active ghost that inspired this book. She currently lives at both the farm and in the small town of Waterford with her family.
