«Upon a Field of Gold» by Richard Strack

Blindsided by fireworks that trigger a vivid flashback, sixty-year-old Dan Bryant can’t shake the vision of him wearing Confederate gray at the Battle of Gettysburg. As new memories surface, this lifelong Northerner realizes he’s remembering himself as nineteen-year-old Joshua Park of the Alabama Thirteenth regiment who left the love of his life and fought in the battle in 1863. Before leaving, he and his love, Becky, had promised they would be reunited in a future life. Is Joshua’s future life now Dan’s life? Why has Joshua chosen Dan? And why now at age sixty? As Dan seeks to make sense of the memories that will not leave him alone, he draws his family into his obsession, straining to the breaking point an already delicate tie with his forty-year-young wife, Mary Jo, who has no desire to share her husband with a Becky from the past. Can Dan discover the reason why he has become Joshua Park without destroying his marriage, his family, and his own sanity? Upon a Field of Gold is a compelling story about a man trying to reconcile his two lives without losing his current life to his past one. Heartwarming and chilling by turns, it’s even more captivating because it’s based upon a true story. — Floyd Largent, reviewer and historian