A historical fiction novella with a fantasy twist.

7767377

Publishing year: 2008

Format: ebook

Publisher: WMG Publishing Inc.

Wordcount from GoodReads: 56

Young Mathew Brady is a bright boy and his teachers say that he could even become a president one day even though his parents are farmers. But Brady wants to be a great man, someone people will remember. He wants to be a painter.

He leaves the farm and goes to New York. To his disappointment, he doesn’t have the talent for painting. Then he meets Samuel Morse who introduces Brady to daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography. Brady is immediately intrigued. The next night, he has a dream about the Daguerre portraits he has taken. A woman in the dream says that the photographs will make Brady great.

Some years later, he has a successful portrait photography studio in New York. He meets the girl of his dreams and marries her. But he feels that he could do more and greater things. When the American Civil War starts, he wants to photograph the war so that humans will always remember the horrors and not repeat them. He uses his money and influence to get into the front lines.

This was a story about obsession. By all accounts, Brady is wealthy and successful, yet he throws it all away to follow his dream. In his dreams, he sees a gallery of photographs some of which he hasn’t shot (yet) and he is commissioned to take photos of other historical tragedies. Brady is a real historical man who took famous photos of the Civil War. The story follows his real life closely.

The story has some very vivid and horrible images about various wars.