H.V. TRAYWICK JR. IS A VIRGINIAN-the real thing. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute with a history degree from the University of Richmond and is now retired from long service as a tugboat captain on Chesapeake Bay. This, his most recent book, is a meditation on his frequent long drives along the shadowy line of the Union/Confederate border from Virginia to Kansas. He has made the journey in fulfilment of kinship responsibility. ALONG THE SHADOW LINE is an interesting reflection on the American past and present as seen by a Southerner well steeped in our history. The account is spatial, temporal, historical, and spiritual. It is a heritage American's view of our disintegrating and alien society and the price the South has paid for belonging to that society. In earlier memoirs Traywick covered his time as an officer in Vietnam (Road Gang: A Memoir of Engineering Service in Vietnam) and his period of questing and traveling afterward (Starlight on the Rails: A Vietnam Veteran's Long Road Home). Traywick's previous books include The Empire of Owls, The Virginia Iliad, A Southern Soldier Boy, The Monumental Truth, Of Apostates and Scapegoats, and The Woke Revolution, among others.