Hardtack is the story of Ellen “Nell” Armstrong, an iron-willed Kentucky girl, and her two best friends, Sam and Isaac. Their life in Paducah is uninterrupted by much of anything interesting… that is, until the Civil War sweeps over everyone, pulling Sam and Isaac in opposite directions. A complex web of love, marriage, and betrayal is soon woven around the trio. Can their friendship survive the conflict? Hardtack is a rap-scrabble romance on the banks of the Ohio, under the looming specter of war.

-- Sometimes the smoke from the factories and riverboats and trains would obscure the night sky entirely. But the town’s industrial breath was blowing somewhere else tonight, and so the Armstrong house was bathed in starlight. Nell studied the little white specks, like glittering dust on black velvet, and she asked,

“You boys ever wonder what it’d be like to be somewhere else?” --

In writing Hardtack, I strove to create a trio of loveable characters who wind up pulled down opposing paths. The conflicts that brew between them shatter the idyllic childhoods they shared. In writing Nell's story, I wanted to mirror the real-life experiences of being conflicted about relationships that so many endure.