A long search lead me to a prospectus for the book and, on page four of that little advertising pamphlet, I found the clue I needed, but not really one that I wanted. “By the editor of Twelve Years A Slave, &c.” it said.

Wait….WHAT? WHY?

(Seriously?)

Like I needed that hornets’ nest — slavery — after months of analyzing another book line by line, with all its twists and turns. I thought my work was finished and done well, but now work would begin anew.

The editor turned out to be an Upstate New York lawyer-turned-author, David Wilson. He had published a total of four books and I would have to read the other three, including one that had recently been made into an Academy Award-winning movie. About slavery.

Wilson’s first two books were just sensationalized tellings of stories that had already been told. The third was Twelve Years. So I begrudgingly left the familiar world of Texas Rangers and Comanche culture and Nelson Lee, and entered a world of race, politics, slavery and Northups.

Why am I telling you this?

I’m telling you so that you don’t think I jumped on the bandwagon, saw the movie, then left the theater in a righteous Confederate huff…seating my Stetson indignantly back on my purty little head and — after removing a charred popcorn kernel from my two remaining teeth and reverently attaching my two Confederate battle flags to the custom poles on the big truck you think I drive (but I don’t) — say, with the Southern drawl you think I have (but I don’t,) “That dang ol’ movie was horseshit! Slavery weren’t like that! That Hollywood nigger’s just spreadin’ more lies!”

Nope. It wasn’t a witch hunt.

And I just said what you call the “n-word.” It was in parody. Get over it.

And for the record, I’ve also never bedded down with any of my cousins, joined the Klan or chewed tobacco and, astonishingly, I do not live in a trailer.

This book was a byproduct of my regular work and would not have been one I’d have addressed otherwise. I had no vested interest or much concern as to whether or not Twelve Years A Slave was accurate or true until I began to study its author, David Wilson, nor have I ever had much interest in defending the South from the denigrating attitudes that still exist toward the region that my state is lumped into.