Baseball at Bull Run

By Steven D. Bennett

The day is July 21, 1861, and two great armies have met at Manassas Junction to begin a war which will not only kill thousands of men, but which will decide the future of the nation. Before a shot is fired, a handful of both Union and Confederate soldiers find themselves separated from their comrades, to stand on a field far away from the ensuing battle. Unable to leave, they conclude that their meeting is one of divine intervention, and they have been given a unique opportunity: to end the war before it begins, with a simple game, winner take all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven D. Bennett
• Release date: Jan 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311634559

Steven D. Bennett

I was born in Boston and grew up in Connecticut and San Diego, which gave me a good background in both history and tanning. I have four children and six grand-children, remarkable in that I am only 35. The fact that I have been married for almost 36 years is the result of an in-utero wedding and honeymoon.I have published many short stories, poems, songs, and recently wrote and directed a musical melodrama that was performed in the San Diego area. With six books under my belt (THE PATH OF DAYS, TRACE THE DEAD EYE, HUMOR OF THE GOSPELS, HUMOR OF THE GOSPELS Daily Study, THRONE and THE CHUCK-IT LIST) I am looking for a bigger belt to stuff the seventh, which hopefully will be completed in time for the Christmas season. It is about a writer who finds to his horror that a mistake he made on page 47 completely invalidates the plot, forcing him to thus track down and kill anyone who has bought the book lest they spread the truth about his miniscule talent. It is titled DON'T READ THIS! and looks to be a best-seller, unless people take the title literally. Fortunately, nothing I write can be taken literally. It is also fortunate I did not stay with the working title: DON'T BUY THIS! Personally, I don't buy a word of it.I also have a blog, I Wandered Off the Tour: A Journey In Self-Publishing, which contains my thoughts and experiences through the tormenting process of creation.Other than writing, I like listening to the same dozen albums and re-runs of the same dozen TV shows I've heard and seen hundreds of times, to the endless delight of my wife.

Book preview

BASEBALL AT BULL RUN

by

Steven D. Bennett

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Smashwords Edition

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Copyright © 2015 by Steven D. Bennett

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If you enjoy my free writings on Smashwords, consider purchasing Thadeus Cochran Comes to Town, my new novel which presents a new genre in fiction, the Spiritual Mystery. Thadeus Cochran, led by faith and futures, comes to the small Connecticut town of Newbury to solve a murder, one that has yet to occur. As he meanders the maze, faces fall into his path as if puzzle pieces. When the inevitable murder does occur, he finds his own frailties and failings as big a stumbling block to finding the killer as the varied townspeople who stand in his way. Thadeus Cochran Comes to Town will be the quickest 100,000 words you will ever read and a book you will come back to time and again.

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Where are we, Captain?

The words hung as heavily as the fog which clung to their clothes. It had come in quick and dense and the ten men moving blindly through the soupy mist were more than anxious, for there was death in the air.

The first shell had gone off at five a.m., but the two hours following were silent and settled. The ever-growing crowds parading casually in from Washington to watch the first battle of the rebellion created a surreal landscape. Men meandered as they awaited instruction, resting on the ground, laughing amongst themselves, acting as if the events to come would be something more to observe than participate in.

Captain Wakefield had purposed to keep the one-hundred men in his command calm, contained,