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George Hancock has written three short novels about life in Ridgefield past.
George Hancock’s Until Jacob Comes Marching Home, the third book in his series of Ridgefield history-based fiction, came out in latter part of this year and is available in town.
Until Jacob Comes Marching Home follows Mr. Hancock’s first book, This Quiet Place, and his second, A Killing at The Inn, and like the first two it draws characters, places and events from Ridgefield history. Again his narrator is Keeler Dauchy, a historical Ridgefielder whose character Mr. Hancock’s imagination fills out based upon a scarecrow sketched by the facts found his research.
“This is the second half of the Civil War story,” he said.
A Killing at the Inn, covers from 1858 to 1863, the second year for the war, and “traces development of Civil War and how our boys started to march off,” Mr. Hancock said
Until Jacob Comes Marching Home follows the movement of Jacob LeGrand Dauchy, his narrator’s son, and tells of other boys from Ridgefield through the end of the war when they come home — events not at all like the image of the song his title echos.
“They seemed to all leave at the same time, but they all came back in dribs and drabs,” Mr. Hancock said.
“The popular idea of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ didn’t happen.”
He looks at difficulties created and faced by the returning soldiers
“How the town treated deserters — it was a very big issue in the Civil War,” he said. “Volunteers who have come home from war, voluntarily, without permission: How does the church deal with that?”
A Keeler Tavern tour guide, Mr. Hancock acknowledges a considerable author’s debt to A View from The Inn, the Keeler Tavern’s republication of Anna Marie Resseguie diary from 1851 to 1867, as well as local historians Charlie Pankenier, Elise Haas, Kay Ables and Jack Sanders.
The book is available in town at Books on the Common, Bissell’s and Bella Home, and also at Keeler Tavern.
Mr. Hancock, who has published three books in two years now, is working on his next project.
“Oh, sure. I’m going to write all winter here, and hopefully in June or so come out with a collection of short stories, which will all be on Ridgefield,” he said. “I’m going to try to come up with stories from each part of town.”
