EXCERPT:

What could be so vital about one little city, my son Henry asked, and I’d refer him to that line by Jefferson Davis, Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South’s two halves together.

Imagine what it feels like, I said, to be a nail stapling down the sole to the base of a shoe, and flapping right in the wind, reeking of gum and paste and sand grains from a walk on the beach. Being a shoe like that couldn’t be easy, let me tell you—tough when you’re walking, and even tougher when you lift up your foot and see there’s nothing of what you meant to gather— nothing but a strange hint of sadness and an awful rising ache in the inner bones.