Author and historian Daniel S. Morrow chronicles the history of events that led to Tom Blackburn's death, the trials that followed and the impact on Lexington, its two colleges and the men and women who would soon find themselves engaged in a great Civil War in his new book, Murder in Lexington.

In 1853 sixteen-year old Mary Evelyn Anderson, already one of the most beautiful women in Virginia spurned the advances of a young Lexington, Virginia, law student. He blamed a VMI cadet, Mary Evelyn's cousin, Tom Blackburn for his humiliation. Armed with two pistols, a stick and a Bowie knife, he called the unarmed cadet out of church, stabbed him in the back, cut his throat, fled the scene of the crime, and after two trials was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

In the trials that followed teams of lawyers, brilliant and inept, dragged members of the most prominent families in antebellum Virginia through all-too-public and even today, all too familiar accounts of seduction, courtship, honor, standing one's ground, and killing in self-defense.

Available October 15 from The History Press, locally from Second Chapter Books, and from major distributors on line. Early orders accepted.