The Persistent Past

<p>This story starts and ends with weddings. Yeah I know a little odd for a story about wars but there it is.</p><p>The first wedding is my oldest daughter's in 1995 where she tells me her new hubby bought an enormous steamer trunk with some old papers and diaries in it; I should have a look.</p><p>So I look and I find...you see I'm an economic historian so what I find in that old trunk...diaries scores of 'em. And papers and a couple of flags some medals... It's not even my period; much of it's early 20th Century. But I look around and look and look...</p><p>And I'm hooked. I'm Curtis Durand and I discovered Edmund Archer Steele in that steamer trunk.</p><p>Nobody's heard of this guy so I have to do some research and some more and I have to consult experts about the stuff in the trunk. Then my teenage daughter gets hooked on Ned Steele much to my wife's concern. She finds historians as exciting as model railroaders...which I am also but she doesn't find <em>me</em> dull for whatever reason.</p><p>Then my boss says I should do something with these diaries. So do a lot of other people.</p><p>But because people know so little about this guy I find it hard to <em>verify</em> the trunk's contents. He might just be some blowhard puffing himself up dropping names like Pershing and Marshall Somerville and Allen Dawes and Conner and Patton ...like he <em>met</em> these guys.</p><p>I find he's buried not far away from where I live at what used to be his farm. His children are alive and so is a younger brother and a couple of other people who knew him.</p><p>Then my oldest has her twins and my job as a professor of American history expands and contracts and I keep coming back to those diaries and the papers and the medals. And my daughter and I write <em>Steele's Battalion: The Great War Diaries</em> about this guy who rises from Corporal to Brigadier General in less than two years because he's a genius with machine guns.</p><p>Gradually the blanks fill in and just as gradually I think I'm too invested in all this so I go for a cure. When I come back...</p><p>Then there's this <em>other </em>wedding that took place in France in 1919. How do I find out about that? Well it's in a diary but you'll have to read <em>The Persistent Past: The Steele Diaries</em> to find <em>that </em>out<em>. </em>Not gonna tell you <em>all</em> my secrets here and now.</p><p></p><p><em>The Persistent Past </em>reintroduces Curtis Durand from <em>The Past Not Taken: Three Novellas</em> and similar to that book Curtis shows how history is recorded one medal one picture one letter one diary at a time.</p>