In the trenches : the fiction of war: American Civil War
Here's a compilation of fiction titles, arranged by war.
Generals
Never Call Retreat by New York Timesbestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen conclude their inventive trilogy with this remarkable answer to the great “what if” of the American Civil War: Could the South have indeed won?
Devil's Dream by From the author of All Souls’ Rising which The Washington Post called “A serious historical novel that reads like a dream,” comes a powerful new novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest, the most reviled, celebrated, and legendary, of Civil War generals.
The March by In 1864, after Union general William Tecumseh Sherman burned Atlanta, he marched his sixty thousand troops east through Georgia to the sea, and then up into the Carolinas. The army fought off Confederate forces and lived off the land, pillaging the Southern plantations, taking cattle and crops for their own, demolishing cities, and accumulating a borne-along population of freed blacks and white refugees until all that remained was the dangerous transient life of the uprooted, the dispossessed, and the triumphant. Only a master novelist could so powerfully and compassionately render the lives of those who marched.
Savannah: or, A Gift for Mr. Lincoln by Georgia 1864: Sherman's army marches inexorably from Atlanta to the sea. In its path: the charming old city of Savannah, where the Lester ladies-attractive widow Sara and her feisty twelve-year-old daughter Hattie-struggle to save the family rice plantation. When Sherman offers the conquered city to President Lincoln as "a Christmas gift," Hattie and the feared general find themselves on a collision course that will astonish both of them.
Traveller by
Examines the events of the Civil War through the eyes of General Robert E. Lee's closest companion and devoted horse, Traveller.
Civil War Women
My Name Is Mary Sutter by An enthralling historical novel about a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War.
Enemy Women by For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation despite the family's avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley it is a nightmare seen at its most terrible on the day the Union Militia arrives to set her house on fire, driving her brother into hiding and dragging her widowed father away, beaten and bloodied. Left to care for two young sisters, Adair sees no road but the one that leads away, and they start out on foot into the winter mountains in search of a safe haven.
Must the Maiden Die by Librarian Glynis Tryon must untangle a tapestry of lust, high treason, and legal treachery that brings the stark reality of the growing Civil War close to home."Imaginative...lucid." --Chicago Tribune
On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon by In the year 1900--on the afternoon she suspects might be the last of her long, eventful life--Emma Garnet Tate Lowell sets down on paper what came before, determined to make an honest account of it. Born to privilege on a James River plantation, she grew up determined to escape the domination of her bullying, self-made father, Samuel P. Tate, and ultimately seceded from his control to marry Quincy Lowell, a surgeon and member of the distinguished Boston family. But then came the Civil War. Working alongside Quincy, assisting him in the treatment of wounded soldiers, she witnessed scenes that would be engraved forever in her memory. And, before beginning the long journey of her own reconstruction, she must face the shame of her relationship to her "servants" and learn the terrible secret that shaped her father's life.
All Things New by In the aftermath of the Civil War, Josephine Weatherly and her mother, Eugenia, struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives when they return to their Virginia plantation. But the bitter realities of life after the war cannot be denied: their home and land are but shells of their previous grandeur; death has claimed her father and brother; and her remaining brother, Daniel, has returned home bitter and broken. Josephine soon realizes that life is now a matter of daily survival--and recognizes that Lizzie, as one of the few remaining servants, is the one she must rely on to teach her all she needs to know. With skill and emotion, Lynn Austin brings to life the difficult years of the Reconstruction era by interweaving the stories of three women--daughter, mother, and freed slave--in a riveting tale.
Battles
The Killer Angels by In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war. Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece is unique, sweeping, unforgettable; the dramatic story of the battleground for America';s destiny.
The Battle of the Crater by With The Battle of the Crater, New York Times bestselling authors Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen take readers to the center of a nearly forgotten Civil War confrontation, a battle that was filled with controversy and misinterpretation even before the attack began. Drawing on years of research, the authors weave a complex narrative interweaving the high aspirations of African American troops eager to prove themselves in battle and the anxiety of a President who knows the nation cannot bear another major defeat.
Thieves of Mercy by Having survived the bloody Battle of New Orleans and the loss of their ironclad Yazoo River, captain Samuel Bowater, engineer Hieronymus Taylor, and the survivors of their crew are given new orders -- take command of an ironclad warship being built in Memphis, Tennessee. Bowater and his men take passage upriver from "Mississippi" Mike Sullivan, one of the wild, undisciplined captains of the River Defense Squadron, only to find, on their arrival, that their ship is not even half built and the enemy is closing fast. Against their better judgment, Bowater and crew join forces with the mercurial Sullivan on board his ad hoc river gunship the General Page. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Confederates once again fling themselves bravely at the overwhelming power of the Yankee invaders. The deadly back-and-forth fight along the Mississippi ends at last in the massive naval battle of Memphis, and the near-suicidal attempt by the Confederates to hold back the Northern flood.
A Country of Our Own by We first met Lt. Ker Custis Claiborne, formerly of the United States Navy, in Fire on the Waters. Claiborne is no admirer of slavery. But he's a Virginian, joining the fledgling Confederate States Navy in 1861. After fighting along the Potomac with the Army of Virginia, Ker and his mentor, Captain Parker Trezevant, burn, sink, and destroy across the Caribbean to undermine the Union and force a truce favorable to the Confederacy.But when their first cruiser proves too slow and small, Ker joins Commander James Bullock in London to buy or build a ship of war that can sweep Yankee commerce from the seas. A daring coup puts Ker in command of the most dangerous raider ever to range from Brazil to Boston, but the bloodiest battle is yet to come -- a confrontation between the ex-opium clipper C.S.S. Maryland and the Union cruiser that has trailed her across a quarter of the world.
When This Cruel War Is Over by They called themselves Sons of Liberty -- a revolutionary conspiracy that intended to form a new confederacy in the American heartland -- and put an end to the American Civil War. Backed by the South, the Sons launch guerilla attacks against Union troops. The year is 1864, the place Indiana and Kentucky. A time of ruthless censorship, conscription, and a seemingly endless war that has left a half a million Americans dead. Union Major Paul Stapleton falls in love with Janet Todd, courier and evangelist for the Sons of Liberty. Another admirer, Colonel Adam Jameson, readies his Confederate cavalry division to support the Sons' revolt. The battle for the future of America is about to begin.
The Last Full Measure by As The Last Full Measure opens, Gettysburg is past and the war advances to its third brutal year. On the Union side, the gulf between the politicians in Washington and the generals in the field yawns ever wider. Never has the cumbersome Union Army so desperately needed a decisive, hard-nosed leader. It is at this critical moment that Lincoln places Ulysses S. Grant in command--and turns the tide of war. Shaara portrays the riveting conclusion of the Civil War through the minds and hearts of the individuals who gave their last full measure.
Gods and Generals by The heartbreaking saga of the years preceding The Killer Angels. "SHAARA'S BEAUTIFULLY SENSITIVE NOVEL DELVES DEEPLY in the empathetic realm of psycho-history, where enemies do not exist--just mortal men forced to make crucial decisions and survive on the same battlefield. . . . [He] succeeds with his historical novel through fully realized characters who were forced to decide their loyalties amid the horrors of their dividing nation." --San Francisco Chronicle
Andersonville by "The greatest of our Civil War novels."—The New York Times. The 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning story of the Andersonville Fortress and its use as a concentration camp-like prison by the South during the Civil War.
Love and War by The bestselling saga that has sold more than 5 million copies.The books that inspired the smash-hit television miniseries.
The Sands of Pride by In this grandly ambitious masterpiece of Civil War fiction, noted novelist and historian William R. Trotter has created nothing less than an epic re-creation of the whole experience of the war-from secession to Gettysburg-within the microcosm of North Carolina, a theater of war never before brought to life in a major novel of the Civil War.
Home Front
Blue Asylum by Amid the mayhem of the Civil War, Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good, compliant woman. Iris knows, though, that her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property. On this remote Florida island, cut off by swamps and seas and military blockades, Iris meets a wonderful collection of residents. Which of these is Ambrose Weller, the war-haunted Confederate soldier whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue, but whose gentleness and dark eyes beckon to Iris? The institution calls itself modern, but Iris is skeptical of its methods, particularly the dreaded "water treatment." She must escape, but she has found new hope and love with Ambrose. Can she take him with her? If they make it out, will the war have left anything for them to make a life from, back home
The Union Quilters by In 1862, the men of Water's Ford, Pennsylvania, rally to President Lincoln's call while Dorothea Granger marshals her friends to "wield their needles for the Union." Meanwhile, Anneke Bergstrom hides the shame she feels for her husband's pacifism; gifted writer Gerda Bergstrom takes on local Southern sympathizers in the pages of the Water's Ford Register; and Constance Wright struggles to help her husband gain entry to the Union Army-despite the color of his skin. As the women work, hope, and pray, the men they love confront loneliness, boredom, and danger on the battlefield. But the women of the sewing circle also forge a new independence that will forever alter the patchwork of life in the Elm Creek Valley.
Homeland by As brother turns against brother in the bloodbath of the Civil War, two young women sacrifice everything but their friendship. Susanna Ashford is the Southerner, living on a plantation surrounded by scarred and blood-soaked battlefields. Cora Poole is the Northerner, on an isolated Maine island, her beloved husband fighting for the Confederacy. Through the letters the two women exchange, they speak of the ordeal of a familiar world torn apart by tragedy. And yet their unique friendship will help mend the fabric of a ravaged nation.
March by As the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats during the dark first year of the war, one man leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. Riveting and elegant as it is meticulously researched, March is an extraordinary novel woven out of the lore of American history.
The Widow of the South by Carnton Plantation, 1894: Carrie McGavock is an old woman who tends the graves of the almost 1,500 soldiers buried there. As she walks among the dead, an elderly man appears--the same soldier she met that fateful day long ago. Today, he asks if the cemetery has room for one more. Based on an extraordinary true story, this brilliant, meticulously researched novel flashes back to 1864 and the afternoon of the Civil War. While the fierce fighting rages on Carrie's land, her plantation turns into a Confederate army hospital; four generals lie dead on her back porch; the pile of amputated limbs rises as tall as the smoke house. But when a wounded soldier named Zachariah Cashwell arrives at her house, he awakens feelings she had thought long dead--and inspires a passion as powerful and unforgettable as the war that consumes a nation.
Cold Mountain by Based on local history and family stories passed down by the author's great-great-grandfather, Cold Mountain is the tale of a wounded soldier Inman, who walks away from the ravages of the war and back home to his prewar sweetheart, Ada. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm, with the help of an intrepid young drifter named Ruby. As their long-separated lives begin to converge at the close of the war, Inman and Ada confront the vastly transformed world they've been delivered. Charles Frazier reveals marked insight into man's relationship to the land and the dangers of solitude. He also shares with the great nineteenth-century novelists a keen observation of a society undergoing change. Cold Mountain re-creates a world gone by that speaks eloquently to our time.
Gone with the Wind by The story is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following Sherman's destructive "March to the Sea". This historical novel features a coming-of-age story, with the title taken from the poem "Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae", written by Ernest Dowson.
Soldiers
The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories by Henry Fleming, a raw Union Army recruit in the American Civil War, is anxious to confirm his patriotism and manhood-to earn his “badge of courage.” But his dreams of heroism and invulnerability are soon shattered when he flees the Confederate enemy during his baptism of fire and then witnesses the horrible death of a friend. Plunged unwillingly into the nightmare of war, Fleming survives by sheer luck and instinct.
Rebels of Babylon by New Orleans, 1863 -- occupied and impoverished, yet defiant. The "embarrassed" corpse of a Yankee heiress washes up on a levee. Citizens disappear in the night from the alleys of the French Quarter. Tales of ritual murder taunt the authorities. And the uneasy truce between the city's fiery inhabitants -- newly freed slaves and their bankrupt former masters, voodoo priestesses, smugglers, and unwelcome Union troops -- stretches to the breaking point. Civil War detective Abel Jones arrives to investigate the death of a young crusader and finds himself facing fantastic rumors of the resurrected dead as the city approaches hysteria and riot.
Unholy Fire by John “Kit” McKittredge is a young Federal officer from Maine who is terribly wounded in one of the first battles of the Civil War. Still unfit for active duty after nine months in hospital, he is recruited by an unorthodox colonel named Valentine Burdette to work in the Provost Marshal General’s office in Washington.
The beleaguered Capital, now swollen to seven times its pre-war population, is filled with saloons, brothels, spies, thieves and murderers. It is also rife with official corruption and political intrigue.
While investigating what appears to be a routine case of military procurement fraud, Kit becomes embroiled in the murder of a beautiful young woman who has had the misfortune to attend the birthday party of Union General Joseph Hooker, the notorious and charming libertine.
The investigation leads Kit through a series of harrowing adventures—both on the battlefield and in the Capital’s darkest dens of depravity—until he and Val Burdette must confront a vast criminal conspiracy that threatens both their own lives as well as the fate of the Republic.
This riveting thriller by the award-winning author of the critically-acclaimedStonewall’s Goldhauntingly brings to life one of the most dramatic periods of the Civil War.
Faded Coat of Blue by In this "winning blend of history and mystery" (Booklist), Owen Parry brings to life the story of Abel Jones, a Welsh immigrant and Union army enlistee. Jones finds himself mysteriously chosen as confidential agent to General George McClellan, the "savior of the Union." No stranger to the cruel paradoxes of war, Jones is asked to investigate the death of Anthony Fowler, a young volunteer captain shot through the heart. Instantly, his murder is blamed on the Confederates. But whispers haunt the death of this fallen martyr, leading Abel Jones from the blood of the battlefield through the intrigues of Washington, D.C., and into a web of secrets and sinister relationships where evil and good intertwine . . . and where heroes fall prey to those who cherished them the most.
