I finished Patrick:Son of Ireland. Hmmm..... what can I say. It was an okay to good (not great) story - as a fiction story. BUT IT WASN'T THE STORY OF PATRICK!! Obviously any attempt to flesh out a story about Patrick would have to involve much in the way of dramatic license. I have no problem with that. But some of the details of the novel flatly contradict what Patrick himself tells us. Example one: according to Patrick, when he returned to Briton, he stayed with his praents for awhile. In the novel he returns to find his parents dead. Example two: Patrick records that he was converted while a sghepherd/slave in Ireland. In the novel he is apprenticing to become a druid and when he returns to Briton searches out druids and can't stand Christians. What is this?? I could say more. My recommendation? Don't read it - you have better things to do. If an author is going to try to fictionalize about an ancient person, at least be true to the person. Argh.......

I leave for the mountains in a few hours. I am going to leave early and travel through Gumberland Gap. My great-grandfather (John H. Mathis - not a misspelling, my grandfather changed our name back to Matthews after generations of misspelling it as Mathis. Most Matthews' family trees in the US have Mathis branches.) was a Confederate soldier (62nd NC Infantry) who was captured at Cumberland Gap in May 1863. I'm going to take a look at the remnants of the forts that were there.