A day after the Battle of Second Manassas and two weeks before the Battle of Antietam, a tiny fight at Ox Hill entered the footnotes of American Civil War history. Which is exactly where I found it in the course of researching and writing about the guerrilla war in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Over five years, I accumulated more and more information about the events leading up to the Battle of Ox Hill and the unique opportunity for decisive victory that the South squandered on a ridge west of Fairfax, Virginia. At a critical moment, Confederate cavalry chief JEB Stuart left the battlefield to serenade a young woman eight miles away. This was not a one off.

The more digging I did, the more I was able to establish a pattern of dopamine-seeking behavior that coincided with JEB Stuart's greatest failures. A Distant Salutation tells the story of how one man's appetites doomed the Confederacy.