For aficionados of Vicksburg and Civil War history, a book by Gulfport native Thomas E. Simmons may pique your interest.   ///   “By Accident of Birth” was published in December 2015 and details the life of the fictional Quinn family from the Civil War’s Siege of Vicksburg through World War I.

It begins with a prologue set in 1915, near the beginning of World War I, when Bethany Quinn is contacted by a representative of the British Crown inquiring about a stash of weapons warehoused in a sugar mill she owns in Cuba.

The call causes Quinn to think back over her tortured life and she re-reads after many years the diaries of her mother, Annielise Quinn, and that of a close family friend who helped raise her, Dr. Theodore Perkins.

Quinn, whose birth and life are nothing short of an extraordinary tale — maybe too extraordinary for some readers to take seriously — is the product of the horrors of the Siege of Vicksburg.

Vicksburg residents who study Civil War history will be interested in reading Simmons’ portrayal of times during the siege. The story interweaves its fictional characters with historic events of the time. Simmons takes great pains to accurately portray life of the times and includes a bibliography of