Goodreads asked Bernie MacKinnon:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Bernie MacKinnon When I was 13 I got a Civil War board game called "Battle Cry" for Christmas. It came with a booklet that gave a good, concise overview of the war, and it was in there that I first read about Jubal Early's 1864 raid on Washington, D.C. Over the years the story kept coming back to me. Then I realized that if any historical event ever lent itself naturally to a novel of suspense, it was this one. The idea for "Lucifer's Drum" finally took root one day when I was looking through an old church cemetery in my home town of Yarmouth, Maine. My imagination wanted to go live in the 19th Century for a while and to take on the monumental subject of the Civil War.

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