The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War $40.00
New York, NY: Henry Holt (2006)
In 1885, haunted by his devastating memories of the Civil War, Cass Wakefield journeys from his Mississippi hometown with with his childhood friend Alison, a dying woman, who persuades him to accompany her to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her brother and father, a quest that reawakens Cass’s vivid recollections.
The Year of Jubilo: A Novel of the Civil War $45.00
New York, NY: Henry Holt (2000)
On a balmy spring day in 1865 Gawain Harper approaches the town of Cumberland, Mississippi, where three years earlier he had boarded a train carrying the latest enlistees in the Mississippi Infantry. Unmoved by the Cause that motivated so many others, Gawain had joined up only when Morgan Rhea’s father told him that he would never wed his beloved Morgan unless he did his part in the war effort.
Now, upon his safe arrival home, Gawain discovers postwar life is far from what he expected. Morgan has indeed waited for him, but before they can marry there are scores to be settled. For in Cumberland, yet another battle is being waged, and the enemy is not the occupying Federal troops but the town’s own “King” Solomon Gault, a deranged, manipulative man on a mission to restore his own brand of justice to a community turned upside down. As Gawain, with unexpected support from a diverse group of men, struggles to find a way to avenge the Rhea family’s honor, he is drawn into an inexorable showdown with Gault that once again pits South against North, and dignity against defeat.
The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War $350.00
Baltimore, MD: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America (1997)
No Southern Living quote.
The Black Flower is a story not only of war, but of men and women seeking redemption, who are stripped of all that anchors them, and who at last turn to honor and courage and love. At twenty-six, Bushrod Carter is already an old soldier, a veteran of all his regiment’s campaigns since Shiloh. Now, on an Indian summer afternoon in 1864, Bushrod finds himself in line of battle once again, on the plain below the obscure village of Franklin, Tennesee.
In the madness and violence of a great battle and its aftermath, Bushrod Carter tries to act his part as well as he can. He must confront his soul and learn from his comrades and from a young girl struggling with her own harsh past.
The Judas Field $40.00
New York, NY: Henry Holt (2006)
It’s been twenty years since Cass Wakefield returned from the Civil War to his hometown in Mississippi, but he is still haunted by battlefield memories. Now, one afternoon in 1885, he is presented with a chance to literally retrace his steps from the past and face the truth behind the events that led to the loss of so many friends and comrades.
The opportunity arrives in the form of Cass’s childhood friend Alison, a dying woman who urges Cass to accompany her on a trip to Franklin, Tennessee, to recover the bodies of her father and brother. As they make their way north over the battlefields, they are joined by two of Cass’s former brothers-in-arms, and his memories reemerge with overwhelming vividness. Before long the group has assembled on the haunted ground of Franklin, where past and present–the legacy of the war and the narrow hope of redemption–will draw each of them toward a painful confrontation.
Moving between harrowing scenes of battle and the novel’s present-day quest, Howard Bahr re-creates this era with devastating authority, proving himself once again to be the preeminent contemporary novelist of the Civil War.
Pelican Road $50.00
San Francisco, CA: MacAdam Cage (2008)
From the acclaimed author of The Black Flower, a beautiful and haunting portrait of the men who served on the great American railroads. Christmas Eve, 1940. On the Pelican Road, an isolated stretch of railway between Meridian, Mississippi and New Orleans, two trains travel toward one another through the snow. A.P. Dunn, engineer aboard the 4512, a southbound freight, can remember every detail of the last trip he made in the snow, in 1923. What he can?t recall are the events of a few hours ago?where he ate his breakfast, how he got the troublesome gash. On the northbound Silver Star, a luxury passenger train packed with returning college students and gift-bearing families, brakeman Artemus Kane has his own memories to contend with. Memories of French trenches and German snipers, of a failed marriage, of a too-short layover spent with Anna Rose Dangerfield, the brilliant and lonely woman he has just left behind in the Crescent City.