Grief and Gettysburg

With one great-great-grandfather serving in the Union Army and the other serving in the Confederate Army, Jean West was genetically hard-wired for a life-long fascination with the Civil War. In high school, she was a volunteer at the Custis Lee Mansion and she majored in history at the College of William and Mary. After a decade in teaching (including a high school named for J.E.B. Stuart) she became an education specialist at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Every morning, she walked past the still extent Apex Building where Mathew Brady’s photographic gallery once operated. Thoroughly familiar with primary sources, Jean mines historic records to try to recreate the people and places of the past as accurately and entertainingly as possible.