I highly recommend that you read this book. If I had to characterize this book, The Good Journey, I would call it a historical romance.

from Amazon.com:
After only three days of courtship, the notoriously difficult Louisville belle marries the autocratic older general (General Henry Atkinson) and for the next 16 years they make their home at the unpromising outpost of Jefferson Barracks, Mo., where he is stationed to enforce federal Indian regulations.

These two subjects are indeed related. General Henry Atkinson built Fort Atkinson, a military installation that huge for its day. It was squarish at something like 400 feet and some change on each side, with the powder magazine in the middle of the fort. Ft. Atkinson was an installation built primarily to promote peace and trade with the natives of the region. It was so cool to stand on the actual ground that so many historical figures stood on. Mary Bulitt herself did not live there at any time, but it was just altogether cool to imagine that her husband was once there. Is this making any damn sense?

I'm a little geeky, I guess. I like history. :)