When I moved back to the beautiful foothills of North Carolina nine years ago, I started wondering out loud why no one had ever written a book on the men shaped by this rural place – Daniel Boone, abolitionist Hinton Helper and Enola Gay bombardier Tom Ferebee. A few years later, I wrote their stories (and that of Peter Stuart Ney because every book benefits from a mysterious Frenchman showing up) in Davie County Mavericks: Four Men Who Changed History published by The History Press in 2018.

“I am a disciple of the ounce because I mistrust history in gallon jugs.

Corroborative detail is a great disciplinarian. It will reveal a historical truth, keeping one grounded in reality. It forces the historian who uses it and collects it to cleave to the truth. It is wiser to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around. And corroborative detail makes a narrative more graphic and intelligible, more pleasurable to read, in short more readable.”

– Barbara Tuchman –