The Last of What I Am, Abigail Cutter
The Last of What I Am, Abigail Cutter
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The Last of What I Am

Author: Abigail Cutter

Narrator: Seth Podowitz

Unabridged: 11 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/19/2023

Synopsis

A ghost in his deserted childhood home in Virginia, Tom Smiley can’t forget the bloody war and its meaningless losses, nor can he shed his revulsion for his role in the Confederate defense of slavery. But when a young couple moves in and makes his home their own in the early twenty-first century, trouble erupts—and Tom is forced to not only face his own terrible secret but also come to grips with his family’s hidden wartime history. He finds an unexpected ally in the house’s new owner, Phoebe Hunter, whose discoveries have momentous consequences for them both.

About Abigail Cutter

Abigail Cutter is the author of The Last of What I Am. She started out as an artist/printmaker with an MFA from George Washington University but quickly developed a deep love of American history. She married a man who came with an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She currently lives there with her family—and the farmhouse's very active ghost.

About Seth Podowitz

Seth Podowitz has always been a storyteller. He began his career as a composer for film, television, and video games and then later worked as a voiceover director for talent agencies and independent productions. Having now spent over fifteen years in voiceover as a director, a teacher, a consultant, and even an agent, he has shifted his focus to audiobook narration.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Susan

Rounded up from 3.5 stars. A grimly realistic novel of the Civil War, rawly revealing the life of a Confederate soldier & his family he left behind. Living in the Shenandoah Valley, it was especially interesting to know the places described. Not a higher rating, because I felt it was described as a......more

Goodreads review by Hollie

This book is not at all what the cover describes it to be. I was hoping for a ghost story, but 99% of it was a first-person telling of the Civil War and could have easily been read as historical non-fiction. Tom’s interactions with Phoebe in present-time make up maybe a whole two pages of the entire......more

Goodreads review by Amanda

This read was out of my normal avenue, but wow how historically eye-opening it was. Yes, the character himself may be fictitious, but the Civil War and all of its horror was very much real. The book is told from the POV of the ghost of a Confederate soldier, who haunts his childhood home. Part 1 show......more

Goodreads review by Lisa

This was such an interesting idea for a book and living near Gettysburg and spending time there I know it's believed that there are many ghosts that remain from the Civil War era. There wasn't as much focus on the haunting as I was hoping for in this story, but there is a lot of well-researched hist......more

Quotes

“Abigail Cutter has rendered the Civil War and its consequences with a rare power and eloquence, combining literary imagination with fidelity to history. She has allowed people who lived and breathed in the past to live and breathe again, telling us of loss and suffering we need to remember.”

“A richly imagined tragedy of a Rebel soldier whose regret for ill-chosen allegiance haunts him from the moment of enlistment through the horrors of a Union prison. It follows him into the afterlife, where he lingers in his ancestral home, unable to shed his shame for fighting for the cause of slavery. Masterful historical research and detail of the nineteenth century invest this story with a reader’s pleasure in a felt life.

“What really haunts us—our own mistakes, or the weight of history? Based closely on the true story of her own uncanny encounters in an inherited antebellum Virginia farmhouse and old letters she found there, Abbie Cutter has crafted a novel that plumbs the painful history of a common soldier in the Civil War and the burdens he cannot set down. A riveting read, rich in historic detail and moral complexity.”

“Tom’s experiences, so vividly described, highlight the futility, chaos and hopelessness of war. . . . A deep and thought-provoking novel.”

“A searing, brilliant, moving, and utterly original Civil War novel, told by the guilt-ravaged Virginia infantryman Tom Smiley whose own war never ended—at least not until a young couple move into his now-historic childhood home and start renovating . . . . A stirring meditation on guilt and redemption.”

“Cutter paints a vivid portrait of the 19th century . . . striking prose . . . [An] absorbing Civil War tale about overcoming guilt.”

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