Vermont author and educator Tyler Alexander will be discussing his newly published book If I Can Get Home This Fall: A Story of Love, Loss, and a Cause in the Civil War on Thursday, December 4 at 7 pm at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum.

The book includes a timeless collection of elegantly written letters by a Vermont soldier (who served in the 6th VT Infantry and later became an officer in a Black regiment-the 19th US Colored Troops) to his wife throughout the course of four terribly long years. The Pulitzer-Prize winning historian James McPherson said, "These are some of the best and most moving of the thousands of Civil War letters I have encountered." These letters-and other source material from the time-tell us much about what Vermonters thought about national identity, race, and the meaning of democracy. 

Coupled with harrowing accounts of combat at places like Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Petersburg is a heart-wrenching love story of a young man and woman from northern Vermont who dreamed of a post-war life together. 

Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Tyler Alexander is a proud eighth generation Vermonter whose ancestors settled in Glover, VT during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency in 1804 and continued to live and farm there for two centuries. He loves all that the outdoors in Vermont has to offer across all four seasons: gardening, hiking, maple sugaring, hunting, fishing, cutting firewood, skiing, canoeing, running, biking, and cider pressing. Tyler taught at North Country Union High School in Newport, VT for 17 years and is currently teaching at Champlain Valley Union High School. He has visited several of the places—often with his students—that are described in his book: Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Washington, DC, and Richmond, VA.   He lives with his wife Aimee, and two children, Caroline and Grant.