Book excerpt: Anxiously awaiting his father's return from the warfront, a 9 year old Central Florida boy is instead witness to a most unusual occurrence, a military officer delivering a mule to his mother. A mule! What happened to his father? Fast forward 20 years, and Othman Rutland is still haunted by that childhood memory. Four fatherless children at war's end, four orphans by 1870, now, he and younger sister Sarah are all that remain of a family of six. Determined to learn what happened to his father, Othman sets out on a life-altering journey. Traveling to Rutledge in 1885, he visits with a retired General, where he begins to collect tiny fragments of a past others would prefer to forget. Learning of the Navy's 1864 landing at Lake Monroe during the close of America's Civil War, Othman's search leads next to Ohio's State Capital, and then to the sacred chambers of a stunning new Pensions Building at our Nation's Capital. Ultimately, Othman's search exposes a file folder, U. S. Provost Marshal's Papers correspondence of the 1860's. A historical novel, The Rutland Mule Matter reveals a true-life story of an early Central Floridian, a statesman, a man who was eradicated from the pages of history. And that man's son, Othman Rutland, finally knowing why his father disappeared, is now faced with a new dilemma, what to do with his disturbing discovery?