The Last of What I Am

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 defense 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 to not only face his own terrible secret but also 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 have momentous consequences for them both.

About the Author :
Abigail Cutter is the author of The Last of What I Am. She started out as an artist/printmaker with an MFA from George Washington University but 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. She currently lives there with her family--and the farmhouse's very active ghost. Seth Podowitz has always been a storyteller. He began his career as a composer for film, television, and video games and then later worked as a voiceover director for talent agencies and independent productions. Having now spent over fifteen years in voiceover as a director, a teacher, a consultant, and even an agent, he has shifted his focus to audiobook narration.

Review :
"A richly imagined tragedy of a Rebel soldier whose regret for ill-chosen allegiance haunts him from the moment of enlistment through the horrors of a Union prison. It follows him into the afterlife, where he lingers in his ancestral home, unable to shed his shame for fighting for the cause of slavery. Masterful historical research and detail of the nineteenth century invest this story with a reader's pleasure in a felt life.-- "John Rolfe Gardiner, author of Newport Rising and O. Henry Prize winner" "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 has rendered the Civil War and its consequences with a rare power and eloquence, combining literary imagination with fidelity to history. She has allowed people who lived and breathed in the past to live and breathe again, telling us of loss and suffering we need to remember."-- "Edward Ayers, author and winner of the Bancroft Prize for In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civ" "What really haunts us--our own mistakes, or the weight of history? Based closely on the true story of her own uncanny encounters in an inherited antebellum Virginia farmhouse and old letters she found there, Abbie Cutter has crafted a novel that plumbs the painful history of a common soldier in the Civil War and the burdens he cannot set down. A riveting read, rich in historic detail and moral complexity."-- "Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner of Horse and March" Cutter paints a vivid portrait of the 19th century . . . striking prose . . . [An] absorbing Civil War tale about overcoming guilt." Tom's experiences, so vividly described, highlight the futility, chaos and hopelessness of war. . . . A deep and thought-provoking novel."