The best historical novels about the American Civil War: what historians don’t tell you

Forget the stereotypes—the images we learned in school about slaves and their owners. Sarah Grimke is best known as a dedicated Northern abolitionist, despite her South Carolina upbringing. Few of her admirers would suspect that Sarah received her first slave as a present on her eleventh birthday. The slave girl, Hetty, was called “Handful” because she was too bright and energetic to be obedient. The two grew up together as fast friends, forever linked despite their differences. They tell their stories in alternating chapters, a literary device that highlights their contrasting experiences and attitudes. Together they have much to teach us about the contradictions that governed their lives—how a slave could feel free while her owner was a prisoner forever bound to family traditions and local culture. 

If you’ve ever looked at a picture of Abraham Lincoln and wondered why he looked so sad, you may find your answer here. He faced an almost insurmountable challenge and mourned the potentially fatal division of his country, it is true. But the death of his young son compounded that grief. Before reading this book, I had never heard of a ‘Bardo,’ and I’m still not convinced of its existence, except as a psychological state. But as a bereaved parent myself, I could understand Lincoln’s need to hold onto the memory of his dead son a little while longer. If you want to know what makes a man strong, you must first learn what can break his heart.

The fictional character of March is no more the real Bronson Alcott than Little Women’s character of Jo is the real Louisa Mae Alcott. Brooks uses Mr. March to show what war can do to a self-satisfied idealist and to his oblivious family. March does not believe in war and will not serve as a soldier. Instead, he supports the northern cause by taking on such roles as that of an itinerant peddler, a chaplain, a teacher, a doctor, and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Nevertheless, he is wounded, both physically and mentally, by the violence and failures of his wartime experiences. Although he survives, he—and therefore his family—must forever change. The lessons they learn are as valid today as they were in the Civil War. 

Beyond the usual five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—a sixth stage of heavy responsibility may develop when someone dies in the service of a great cause. As the Battle of Franklin played out in the yard of her Carnton Plantation, Carrie MccGavock felt that sense of obligation to the 9000 soldiers who died in that battle. It is in that sense that Carrie called herself the “Widow of the South.” She disinterred over 1000 anonymous bodies, identified them, reburied them in her own cemetery, and sought to give their families a sense of closure. This moving novel, based on a true story, reminds us that the Civil War was more than maps and casualty statistics. It is a story of heartbreak and devotion.

The death toll of the Civil War was horrendous, the list of the wounded? Endless. Medical schools did not exist; doctor trained their assistants. There were no emergency rooms, no hospitals, no triage, and certainly no female nurses to care for those bleeding male bodies. In many respects, the medical profession was born on Civil War battlefields with the brave women who ventured among the dead and dying to staunch the flow of blood. So, who were the women who emerged from their sheltered lives to care for wounded soldiers in the Northern army? I wrote about one of them—Nellie Chase—but I thought she was an exception. These stories of the women who joined the Northern war effort expanded my knowledge beyond my wildest expectations.