The book has pictures, too!

Even if reading isn't your thing, the new book does contain several interesting pictures.

(Thanks go out to Kristen Burden for scanning them to the publisher's nit-picky specifications.)

1. "Shady Grove," pictured here, was built as a wedding gift for the son of Patrick Henry, and became the Morgan family's plantation home in the 1830s.

2. Katherine Stith Jones, matriarch of the extended family, portrait by renowned artist George Caleb Bingham.

3. Lucy Ann Jones-Swinney, the grand dame of "Sylvan Villa," near Glasgow, Missouri, also by Bingham.

4. Capt. William Daniel Swinney, my namesake, also by Bingham.

5. Capt. James Lorenzo Morgan, my great-great-great grandfather, a central figure in the book.

6. Jennie Brown Morgan, his wife, from a photo taken during their exile days in New York City.

7. Capt. W.H. "Buck" Morgan, who led a failed charge at the Battle of Plymouth in North Carolina.

8. Yours truly during a research trip to Glasgow, Missouri, in 2001.