The following story is based on actual events and real historical personalities. Some of the names and locations have been changed for the sake of privacy. Professor Martin Dean’s untimely demise almost a year ago has meant that the final responsibility for publishing these documents has fallen to me, his second cousin and closest living relative.
I realize that as the information contained herein becomes widely available, academic specialists in a variety of fields will subject it to further scrutiny, and opinions will vary as to its accuracy. Indeed, I have already shared the contents with several colleagues who are well-known authorities on the authors discussed. While I am confident in the tale’s accounts of key events and personalities, having done a thorough fact checking myself, I do recognize the need for scholarly interrogation of the book’s central claims and overall historicity. And so I welcome all doubts and debate, and I look forward to the amiable conversations with my fellow researchers that will certainly ensue.
And yet, although factuality and narrative accuracy are crucial, I would advise readers to embrace the “story-truth” revealed here: that we remember the dead—return to their great written works—and reconnect with the invigorating power of the words, and the letters, that they have left behind for us, the living. Like my distant cousin Professor Dean, I have dedicated my own life to precisely these ideals.
—HKB, July 4, 2016