Family secrets play a big role in A Lord Apart. The hero and heroine discover a connection from the past that they had no idea existed. I’ve found some family secrets of my own through genealogy research, which can turn up unexpected information about our forebears. Census data may be particularly interesting, though sometimes you have to you read between the lines. For example, my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side reported his job as “photographic artist” in the 1870 US census. I’ve always been delighted by this unapologetic claim. Here’s a man who saw himself as not simply a photographer, but as an artist. He was in his twenties at the time. I “picture” him responding to the census taker with pride. Maybe making sure the person wrote what he said, exactly. This ancestor named his daughter “Vida Delight.” I can almost hear him saying it. The census says his wife was “keeping house,” and it appears that her parents lived next door. Her father, fifty, is listed as a shoemaker. I begin to wonder how the artist and the craftsman got along. Friction? Admiration? Mutual incomprehension? Pictures of shoes? On the other side of my family, I discovered through…