A Historical Fiction Series by Virginia R. Bensen
Two Novels, One Divided Valley
A nation divided by night. A valley waiting for the light.
Winchester, Virginia. On the eve of war.
The Winchester Series
Standalone stories set in and around Winchester, Virginia, as a nation edges toward war. Read them in order, or start with whichever calls to you first.
Book One
Winchester: Bliss and Fire opens in the Shenandoah Valley of 1846, where the charismatic Jack MacDougal rides out to buy dairy bulls from a Mennonite farmer and discovers something far more valuable: Sarah Schmidt. Their forbidden courtship, across class, faith, and family opposition, is the breathing heart of the novel's first act. Sarah, intelligent, spirited, and quietly restless under the strict codes of her community, is the novel's true protagonist.
Book Two
At Abbington Hills, the MacDougal family lives in a world ruled by reputation, class, loyalty, and tradition. Jack MacDougal is expected to follow the path laid before him, but when he crosses paths with Sarah Schmidt, a young Mennonite woman raised under strict religious order, both families are pulled into a conflict neither can easily escape. As tensions rise around Harper's Ferry, the MacDougals must decide what matters most: social standing, family duty, personal freedom, or survival.
Blending fictional characters with real Civil War era events.
A First Look: Book Two
Chapter 01
Winchester, Virginia. Orchard country and church spires, standing where armies would meet again and again. A town that changed hands more than seventy times before the war was done.
See the BooksChapter 02
As the nation splits, Winchester becomes a corridor of war. Occupied, contested, and never fully at rest, the town lives under whichever flag arrived last.
See the BooksChapter 03
The MacDougal family holds to reputation, loyalty, and faith even as the ground shifts beneath Abbington Hills. Every choice they make now carries the weight of a name.
See the BooksChapter 04
Union blue and Confederate grey press in from opposite horizons, dividing neighbors, kin, and conscience. In Winchester, the front line runs through parlors and pews.
See the BooksChapter 05
Between the two fires, an unlikely bond forms between Jack MacDougal and Sarah Schmidt. It is the thread the novel follows to its end, through love, loyalty, division, and the cost of choosing a side.
See the Books
From the Journal
Civil War History
How Winchester's roads shaped the war that moved through it again and again.
Women's History
On the households, farms, and families held together by the women left behind.
Writing Life
Notes on research, record keeping, and turning history into a novel.
The Podcast
Conversations on Civil War women's history, the WWI homefront, and the writing life. Episodes coming soon.
Get NotifiedSpeaking and Living History
Virginia speaks and performs for libraries, historical societies, book clubs, schools, and virtual audiences.