The seasons, the people, the moments of our lives, -a day at the beach, a walk in the woods, a realization that life is passing by, a memory of those already gone. From thinking about cleaning the garage to deciding not to empty the dish rack. From a meteor shower to a missing dish at a family meal. From Biblical lessons to our bewilderment reading today's newspaper. All these are there to be celebrated, for they make up the fabric of living

Imagine a young man in Ohio quitting his good job with a newspaper, leaving his two young children and his pregnant wife, to answer his nation's call to go off to war and save the Union. And imagine his younger brother who had already enlisted a year earlier but was fighting for the Confederacy Then imagine their father fifty years before, a child trying to get by on the streets of Baltimore, who in a different war is taken aboard a privateer as her powder monkey. Finally, imagine that these were not fictional characters but were in fact the author's ancestors whose stories of valor in...