Excerpt from The General and Julia by Jon Clinch, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She slips from the bed and puts her ear to the floorboards and can nearly make out the words that filter up from below as her father regales the lieutenant with one of his disquisitions. An occasional grunt of agreement from his young visitor serves as a kind of punctuation, but otherwise it is a solo performance. If she has learned anything in her eighteen years, it's that once her father gets started, there is rarely need or opportunity for anyone else to put in a word. The colonel possesses refined and unshakable opinions on most everything created by God during His six days of labor, as well as a list of things He ought to have undertaken on that first misspent Sabbath.

At least, she thinks, He managed to create Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant.

Time passes and the shadows in the barnyard begin to lengthen and the conversation from the room below, if conversation it may be called, slows and stalls and sputters to a halt. She knows from previous visits that the lieutenant shall be released at any moment, and since there are few other family members around for him to call upon today, she must head downstairs directly if their paths are to cross before he takes his leave. She very nearly brings the bird to show him but thinks better of it at the last moment, for as much as she desires the lieutenant to comfort her, she desires even more for her father to believe that she has obeyed him and disposed of the body. So she takes the empty cage down from its hook and carries that instead. She times her steps that she might meet the lieutenant in the front hall or the little sitting room or perhaps the dim parlor beyond it as he exits her father's office. Surely enough, her strategy works.

"Julia!" he calls from the shadows. "Are you taking your friend out for some fresh air?"

She stops, lifts the cage that he may see it more clearly from where he stands, and gives him a look composed of knitted eyebrows and woe.

"My goodness," says the lieutenant. "He's flown the coop!"

"Worse," says Julia.

"Worse?"

"He's passed."

"No." He rushes to her side.

"Yes."

"When?"

"Just this morning."

He takes the cage from her, and although it weighs nothing it is as if he is lifting a considerable burden.

"Lieutenant Grant…"

"Ulysses. Please."

"Ulysses."

He gives the empty cage an appraising look. "What has become of the body?"

"Upstairs." She sniffs a little. "In my room."

He studies her face. Her eyes are clear and her cheeks are pale and there is no particular sign that she has been crying, yet the overall impression that she gives is one of weariness and grief. He gives her a kindly smile and indicates the way upstairs with a tilt of his head. "Perhaps you could fetch him. We ought to be attending to the obsequies."

She leaves him holding the cage and dashes up the stairs, her expression just a shade or two brighter than she would desire it to be in a world any less perfect than this.

He asks her to wait a bit while he takes the cage to the barn and sees about one thing or another. In the yard he finds the black stable boy and inquires as to the availability of a saw and a hammer and some little nails. Also a scrap or two of lumber. The boy advises him that although the man who does carpentry has gone to town and left his toolshed locked up, he knows where the key is hidden. His manner suggests that he knows the plantation's every last secret, not just this one, and Grant suspects that he might. Children, regardless of their color, always know secrets.

The boy leads him around behind the toolshed but has second thoughts at the last moment. Is Grant to be trusted? There could be grave consequences otherwise. The lieutenant assures him that he will leave everything—including their secret—intact and in good order. The boy, satisfied or at least placated, scrambles around to the back of the shed and prizes away a loose board to reveal the key.

Excerpted from The General and Julia by Jon Clinch. Copyright © 2023 by Jon Clinch. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.