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MWSA Review
An American family’s struggle woven onto the tapestry of one of the most bitter times in US history!
Many authors who attempt to write historical fiction have difficulty weaving their story onto the backdrop of the historical time-period they use as a setting. Those authors could learn a lot from David H. Jones. Taking only a few snippets of journals, memoirs, and obscure newspaper articles, Jones expertly tells the tale of a Maryland family driven apart by the Civil War. The youngest brother takes up arms with the Confederacy, while an older brother becomes a Union officer. Both serve with distinction, meeting on the field of battle at Petersburg.
The main characters in the book are all historical figures, and the esteemed poet Walt Whitman is a key figure in the book, as he spends time with both brothers as they are recuperating from wounds. The author does a masterful job of taking the historical characters and events and filling in the gaps in the historic timeline with completely believable events which only add to the rich tapestry of the story. Civil war enthusiasts as well as those who enjoy good family drama stories will find this book hard to believe. FIVE STARS.
MWSA Reviewer: Ron Ballister
Author's Synopsis
Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, this harrowing novel expands upon the story of poet Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the Civil War brings him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, DC, at the bedside of Rebel soldier William Prentiss. Just after the fighting has ended, William’s brother Clifton, a Union officer, is admitted into another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link between the two boys and their fractured family. Through their story, the narrative is swept from the hospital to Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, and onwards to the drawing rooms of high-society Richmond and the battlefields where North and South collide.