I am saddened and frustrated by polarization in American life today, and I believe that the Civil War has lessons to teach us about how we can avoid deeper divisions in our country. I grew up in Maryland, a border state, and have relatives that fought for the North, as well as relatives who fought for the South. In addition, I have Quaker ancestors who hated slavery and supported the Union, but who would not fight because they were pacifists. I am passionate about understanding the tensions that have always run through American life, and want to explore the topic deeply in my reading and writing.
I was completely entranced by the earthy and elegant language of the characters, which drew me into the dirt and blood of the Civil War. Until reading the book, I had no idea of the personal pain generated by this great political conflict.
The landscape of Western North Carolina completely entranced me, as did the love story at the heart of the novel. Images from the book continue to haunt me years after I finished it.
In 1997, Charles Frazier’s debut novel Cold Mountain made publishing history when it sailed to the top of The New York Times best-seller list for sixty-one weeks, won numerous literary awards, including the National Book Award, and went on to sell over three million copies. Now, the beloved American epic returns, reissued by Grove Press to coincide with the publication of Frazier’s eagerly-anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons. Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, a Confederate soldier named Inman decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge mountains to Ada, the woman he loves.…
I had appreciated the author as a writer of insightful essays and opinion pieces, so I was intensely curious about his first work of fiction. He blew me away with his imaginative telling of the liberation of enslaved people during the Civil War. Fact and fiction dance back and forth in this book, which reveals the horrors of slavery while celebrating the joy of the unstoppable human quest for freedom.
'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah Winfrey
Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully today
Hiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom.
Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, he is also born gifted with a…
The 19th century women's rights movement and the rise of public education intertwine with one woman's story of struggle, perseverance, and love.
Alice Harris is pressed to marry a Civil War veteran twice her age when her family’s inn fails in 1882 in western North Carolina. She remakes herself by…
I thought I knew my United States history, but I did not know the siege of Vicksburg, one of the most horrifying and significant military actions of the Civil War.
This book opened my eyes to the intense pain of the engagement through the stories of soldiers and civilians, men and women. The author does a masterful job of humanizing an account that could easily become a textbook story of a military engagement. He left me understanding the scar this siege left on Vicksburg for 100 years.
Continuing the series that began with A Blaze of Glory, Jeff Shaara returns to chronicle another decisive chapter in America’s long and bloody Civil War. In A Chain of Thunder, the action shifts to the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. There, in the vaunted “Gibraltar of the Confederacy,” a siege for the ages will cement the reputation of one Union general—and all but seal the fate of the rebel cause.
In May 1863, after months of hard and bitter combat, Union troops under the command of Major General Ulysses S. Grant at long last successfully cross…
I am in awe of Erik Larson, a writer of such carefully researched histories that he will not report that a person smiled unless the expression is documented in multiple sources.
This story of the attack on Fort Sumter reads like a novel, as it describes the people and events that led to the start of the Civil War. I found myself moving quickly through the multiple short chapters, anxious to understand the many forces that led to the division of our nation.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War in this “riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult” (Los Angeles Times).
“A feast of historical insight and narrative verve . . . This is Erik Larson at his best, enlivening even a thrice-told tale into an irresistible thriller.”—The Wall Street Journal
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists…
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by…
I love that the author introduced me to Robert Smalls, whose story has rarely been told. An enslaved man in South Carolina, he stole a Confederate ship and sailed to freedom, later becoming a member of the US Congress.
I was angry that I had never known about Smalls, and this book has turned me into an evangelist for him. The author’s choice to tell his story in the first person was a risky move, but it paid off beautifully, allowing me to enter deeply into the life of a truly great man.
"Before this decisive night, I’d not fully appreciated the subtle line between inspiration and insanity. But now, with all our lives at risk, I found myself navigating that most perilous edge . . . "
Inspired by the life of an unsung American hero and slave, Trouble the Water navigates the rich tributaries of courage, betrayal, and redemption. In his inspiring journey, Robert Smalls witnesses great privilege and suffering alongside his owner’s daughter and the dangerous son of a firebrand secessionist. At the age of twelve, he’s sent to work in Charleston, where he loads ships and learns to pilot…
My book opens a window on the riverfront town of Occoquan, Virginia, and offers glimpses of social upheaval through chapters that alternate between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. In 1862, Quaker resident Ann Bagley fears that her sons will abandon their pacifism and join the newly established Confederate army. Troops march through the town, and shots are fired, enflaming secessionists and Unionists alike.
In 2022, Harley Camden, the struggling Riverside Methodist Church pastor, fears that civil war will return to Occoquan. He tries to care for his congregation and keep the peace, even as he lends a hand in the archaeological dig of a Quaker house with a mysterious grave. But when people begin to die, he encounters an evil deeper than history.
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left…
