Which person who acted in many Furman Theatre productions is the author of TWO fine books?

The Furman Department of Theatre Arts is happy to congratulate Sam Hodges (Class of 1977) on his second book-length publication, Letters to Amanda. Currently employed as a journalist covering Washington, DC for the Mobile Register, Sam was a frequent participant in Furman theatre productions during his student years. In addition to his fine work on the mainstage in You Can't Take It With You, The Last Meeting of the Nights of the White Magnolia (pictured here), and The Imaginary Invalid, Sam also appeared in studio theatre productions of Wilde's Salomé and Strindberg's Easter.

With his first novel, B-Four, Sam chronicled the adventures of Beauregard Forest, a young journalist and sometime Civil War re-enactor with a knack for dying simply during battle demonstrations without farbish extravagance. At work, Beauregard has been saddled with the nickname "B-Four" because none of his stories get any closer to the front page than Section B, Page 4. On his comic journey to the front page and first love, Beauregard foils a nefarious plot involving a hijacked school portable and uncovers an attempt, involving 20 Bear Bryant imitators stationed at crucial intersections, to snarl Atlanta traffic.

Sam and his cousin, Jeffrey C. Lowe, edited Letters to Amanda, The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern Virginia. Fitzpatrick, who served with Lee's army in Virginia from the Seven Days battles in 1862 until the fall of Petersburg in 1865, was Hodges's and Lowe's great-great grandfather. Prior to the war, Fitzpatrick had worked as a school teacher in Texas. After he returned to farming in his native Georgia south of Atlanta, Fitzpatrick married Amanda Elizabeth White; their first child was born soon after Hill Fitzpatrick's enlistment. Anxious for the welfare of his family and hopeful of obtaining useful items from home, Fitzpatrick wrote Amanda frequently; one hundred of the letters survive. Fitzpatrick's well-written correspondence, introduced and annotated by Hodges and Lowe, makes compelling reading and provides a detailed description of an enlisted man's struggle to maintain his ties with home and his well being in camp during some of the most famous American military campaigns.

Congratulations Sam! Keep typing. We want to read the next one.

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