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David Cecelski 

There are some good reasons why the Civil War is so endlessly fascinating for authors, filmmakers and the people who consume the books and movies. The history is just so rich—it's an oil well that will never go dry. Case in point: Local historian David S. Cecelski unearthed the remarkable history of one Abraham Galloway from Wilmington—slave, spy, freedom fighter and politician, all by his death at age 33. The son of a white sailor and a black enslaved woman, he escaped before the outbreak of the Civil War, whereupon he distinguished himself in conflict and in the relative peace that followed. Cecelski spent a decade piecing together Galloway's story, and in The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway & the Slaves' Civil War, he reveals that the African-Americans down east were far more unruly than commonly supposed, taking aggressive steps of their own to secure their liberty long before Gen. Sherman arrived at war's end. Cecelski appears at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Quail Ridge and at 7 p.m. Friday at Regulator Bookshop. —David Fellerath