Q. What made you decide to write a novel about the Civil War in Georgia?
A. I had long been interested in the fact that many citizens and towns in the South were, in fact, against the war from the beginning. My own hometown, Madison, Ga., had a sizeable minority that was against the war, and I combined that with stories I’d heard from my own family’s involvement in the conflict.

Q. How much of A Distant Flame is true?
A. I spent ten years researching and writing the book and had it vetted by a Civil War historian before even submitting it to my agent. Virtually everything that happens during the battles from Dalton to Atlanta in the spring of 1864 in my book is factually accurate, down to the weather. The movements of troops, the outcome of engagements, the lay of the land—all of this is accurate, I believe. Still, I want to make clear I am not a historian, and where necessary, I sometimes changed facts, though only in small, insignificant ways.

Q. What history should someone wanting to know about the Atlanta campaign read?
A. I would strongly recommend a book called Decision in the West by Albert Castel.

Q. What kinds of material did you use in your historical research?
A. In addition to many books, which are cited at the end of the novel, I read diaries, letters, newspapers, and official government records of the war in writing the novel.

Q. How do you decide what is “true” when so much was happening on both sides during the Atlanta campaign?
A. That’s a fair question. A historian’s duty is to balance everything, to use primary documents, and to make a judgment about what sources can be relied upon. A novelist’s duty is to tell what he or she sees as “true” in the context of the story. I imagined only a bare fraction of what was really happening—more than that would not be manageable in the format of a novel.

Q. What do you think about the idea of the Old South?
A. That it’s largely a myth that came from the ashes of the South’s defeat. While I honor those who fought and died on both sides, I think that most of the South’s positions in the war were in error and that slavery was a grave moral evil that had to be eradicated. I am therefore glad that the South lost the war.

Q. Did you have relatives who fought in the war?
A. Two of my great-grandfathers did, and one was wounded at the Battle of Griswoldville near Macon and walked home to South Carolina after he healed. He was part of the Athens (Ga.) Home Guard. Interestingly, I found out after finishing the novel that my nine-greats grandfather Alexander Herring, Jr., was also the great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln.

Q. Some authors’ books are much alike throughout the course of their careers. Yours have all been quite different from each other. Why?
A. The short answer is that I hate to repeat myself. A more accurate one is that my interests range across many topics and time periods, and I have gone toward what interests me.

Q. How does being a creative writing professor at the University of Georgia affect your writing?
A. I frequently have superb students, both graduate and undergraduate, who challenge me and give me a fresh outlook on writing. I love teaching, and it keeps me involved with many of the great books that I routinely teach.

Q. What other Civil War novels would you recommend?
A. There are hundreds, but I’d particularly recommend The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara; Andersonville by MacKinley Kantor; Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier; The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane; and The Wolf Pit, by Marly Youmans.

Q. Did you read everything available on the Atlanta Campaign to craft your novel about it?
A. Hardly. Authoritative estimates claim between 50,000 and 80,000 books have been published on the American Civil War, and there are thousands of still-unpublished letters and diaries, as well as many yet-uncovered contemporaneous news accounts. Not even the best Civil War historians have read more than a fraction of what’s available. It isn’t humanly possible.

Q. Is the fact that so many people know so much about the Civil War a problem in writing a novel about it?
A. A huge one. But it’s also an interesting challenge, and I had a great deal of pleasure doing it.