About the book:
In the summer of 1866, young Seamus Delaney, a former colonel in the Irish Brigade and a Union veteran of the Civil War, checks into the Cauterskill Mountain House, a grand hotel perched on a summit overlooking the Hudson Valley. Seamus is still employed, in a clandestine capacity, by the government, but has been ordered by his superior, the shadowy Secretary, to take a rest. On the morning of his arrival, his path crosses that of the lovely, ethereal Emily, and later in the day he rescues her when her horse accidentally stampedes and her buckboard nearly plummets over the Kaaterskill Falls. What first appears to be an accident soon seems to Seamus to be attempted murder. Early the following day, a murder is committed, and the victim is not Emily, but a man shot from behind while attending a prayer service on the piazza of the hotel.
Luther Van Bronc, a black man who, like Seamus, is a veteran of the Civil War, is accused of firing the fatal shot. At the request of Luther’s employer, the owner of the hotel, the wealthy Mr. Beecher, it falls to Seamus to clear the accused before a lynch mob renders its own justice.
In pursuit of this task, Seamus finds himself contending with conspiracies he had thought long since dead, with violent secret societies, Copperheads, slave-catchers, spies, assassins, destructionists and with his own demons. At every turn, he finds his enemies to be more powerful and sophisticated than expected and the stakes of the game to be higher and higher. He finds allies in unexpected places and, in the end; he discovers a hidden truth which no one, least of all the Secretary, is willing to admit.
The Veteran in a New Field, a mystery novel, presents in microcosm the turbulence and heroism of a diverse 19th century American society just emerging from a long and brutal Civil War. While that society hoped that the struggle was at last over, it was not, the scars remained and social conflict, frequently violent, continued. The characters in the novel represent many facets of that America and join together, asthey did in the actual war, to overcome the forces of greed and bigotry.