As an American and a Southerner I have always been drawn to my countries history. Like all history there is good and the bad. I live in a state that is extremely rich in Civil War History and Southern Heritage. I have always been interested in the families of the south that live during the war and how it affected their lives. Recently my interest has deepened. I think it’s because I came across some documents or memories-if you will-that was written during the Reconstruction Period of the South. Since then that era has been on my mind. Then I was looking through some pictures of Madison, Georgia. A town in Georgia that Sherman and his army did not burn down on their march to the sea. Low and behold, a story of the south began to develop in my mind. So begins my research and reading of every novel and non-fiction book I can get my hands on about the civil war and the reconstruction.
Today, I share with you five historical fiction books of the era that is on my wish-list. Enjoy!
A Separate Country by Robert Hicks
Set in New Orleans in the years after the Civil War, A Separate Country is based on the incredible life of John Bell Hood, arguably one of the most controversial generals of the Confederate Army–and one of its most tragic figures. Robert E. Lee promoted him to major general after the Battle of Antietam. But the Civil War would mark him forever. At Gettysburg, he lost the use of his left arm. At the Battle of Chickamauga, his right leg was amputated. Starting fresh after the war, he married Anna Marie Hennen and fathered 11 children with her, including three sets of twins. But fate had other plans. Crippled by his war wounds and defeat, ravaged by financial misfortune, Hood had one last foe to battle: Yellow Fever. A Separate Country is the heartrending story of a decent and good man who struggled with his inability to admit his failures-and the story of those who taught him to love, and to be loved, and transformed him.
The Outer Banks House by Diann Ducharme
As the wounds of the Civil War are just beginning to heal, one fateful summer would forever alter the course of a young girl’s life.
In 1868, on the barren shores of post-war Outer Banks North Carolina, the once wealthy Sinclair family moves for the summer to one of the first cottages on the ocean side of the resort village of Nags Head. Seventeen-year-old Abigail is beautiful, book-smart, but sheltered by her plantation life and hemmed-in by her emotionally distant family. To make good use of time, she is encouraged by her family to teach her father’s fishing guide, the good-natured but penniless Benjamin Whimble, how to read and write. And in a twist of fate unforeseen by anyone around them, there on the porch of the cottage, the two come to love each other deeply, and to understand each other in a way that no one else does.
But when, against everything he claims to represent, Ben becomes entangled in Abby’s father’s Ku Klux Klan work, the terrible tragedy and surprising revelations that one hot Outer Banks night brings forth threaten to tear them apart forever.
With vivid historical detail and stunning emotional resonance, Diann Ducharme recounts a dramatic story of love, loss, and coming of age at a singular and rapidly changing time in one of America’s most beautiful and storied communities.
Chasing the North Star by Robert Morgan
In his latest historical novel, bestselling author Robert Morgan brings to full and vivid life the story of Jonah Williams, who, in 1850, on his eighteenth birthday, flees the South Carolina plantation on which he was born a slave. He takes with him only a few stolen coins, a knife, and the clothes on his back–no shoes, no map, no clear idea of where to head, except north, following a star that he prays will be his guide.
Hiding during the day and running through the night, Jonah must elude the men sent to capture him and the bounty hunters out to claim the reward on his head. There is one person, however, who, once on his trail, never lets him fully out of sight: Angel, herself a slave, yet with a remarkably free spirit.
In Jonah, she sees her own way to freedom, and so sets out to follow him.
Bristling with breathtaking adventure, Chasing the North Star is deftly grounded in historical fact yet always gripping and poignant as the story follows Jonah and Angel through the close calls and narrow escapes of a fearsome world. It is a celebration of the power of the human spirit to persevere in the face of great adversity. And it is Robert Morgan at his considerable best.
Sisters of Shiloh by Kathy & Becky Hepinstall
In a war pitting brother against brother, two sisters choose their own battle.
Joseph and Thomas are fresh recruits for the Confederate Army, daring to join the wild fray that has become the seemingly endless Civil War, sharing everything with their fellow soldiers—except the secret that would mean their undoing: they are sisters.
Before the war, Joseph and Thomas were Josephine and Libby. But that bloodiest battle, Antietam, leaves Libby to find her husband, Arden, dead. She vows vengeance, dons Arden’s clothes, and sneaks off to enlist with the Stonewall Brigade, swearing to kill one Yankee for every year of his too-short life. Desperate to protect her grief-crazed sister, Josephine insists on joining her. Surrounded by flying bullets, deprivation, and illness, the sisters are found by other dangers: Libby is hurtling toward madness, haunted and urged on by her husband’s ghost; Josephine is falling in love with a fellow soldier. She lives in fear both of revealing their disguise and of losing her first love before she can make her heart known to him.
In her trademark “vibrant” (Washington Post Book World) and “luscious” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) prose, Kathy Hepinstall joins with her sister Becky to show us the hopes of love and war, the impossible-to-sever bonds of sisterhood, and how what matters most can both hurt us and heal us.
Red River by Lalita Tademy
From the New York Times bestselling author of Cane River comes the dramatic, intertwining story of two families and their struggles during the tumultuous years that followed the Civil War.
Here are some of the wishlists from a few of my friends this month:
Heather @ The Maiden’s Court
Magdalena @ A Bookaholic Swede
Holly @ 2 Kids and Tired
Erin @ Flashlight Commentary – To Come
Colleen @ A Literary Vacation
Centuries ago, Raphael was a blasphemous knight who fought in the Crusades purely for his own mercenary benefit, and to satisfy his taste for killing. Now, condemned for his evil passions and hypocrisy, he wanders the earth a vampire, cursed with first-hand knowledge of the supernatural world he once denied existed. The powerful relic he still possesses from his days as a Crusader has been stolen by a rival vampire who has recruited an army of soulless underlings to aid him in spreading evil. At the time he learns this, Raphael has been hunting this vampire for nearly a century, and it seems the final battle is destined to take place in Prague.br For help in this quest, Raphael must enlist the aid of two humans, David and Susan, who suddenly find themselves immersed in a world they never imagined, entangled with supernatural forces they can’t control. Susan, in particular, finds herself conflicted as she struggles with her inexplicable attraction to Raphael. In the end, both Susan and Raphael will be called upon to exercise courage and faith, and in the process, the question, “What would happen if a vampire truly accepted God?” is answered.
A wealthy widow of a nobleman, daughter of a famous scientist, and skeptic who only trusts what can be proven.
I know evil exists, I met it face to face Solomon Noche is a therapist in the seemingly normal small town of Retselville, Kentucky dealing with displaced anger toward God after his family dies tragically. Nightmares encapsulate him where an ancient demonic cult sacrifices children in Retselville. Despite Sol’s protest, God chooses him to stop them. This discovery thrusts him into a journey where reality and psychosis blur as a nightmarish figure torments him with riddles and time-traveling horrors. The first riddle leads Sol to unearth a preacher’s journal from the 1800’s in a secret cellar in his yard. It details Elijah Darius’ mission to stop the cult and his eyewitness account of a demon named Miyah and its demand of child sacrifices to the ancient god Dagon. The journal intertwines with Sol’s life, and guides him to expose more secrets about Retselville, and the evil hidden history of the grounds where he works. As each riddle is solved, more horrors are uncovered including finding a sacrificial altar, a ritual dagger, and a well of children’s skulls. The closer he gets to the truth, the more sinister the secrets become as he believes all of Retselville may be part of the cult and their centuries’ old secrets. More than Sol’s life hangs in the balance, as Miyah tempts him with unfathomable choices. But resolves his only hope is in repentance as only God can save him and defeat this demon and its’ followers. Sol confronts Miyah in its appalling, fallen form a final time, in a battle beyond Retselville and Solomon Noche, but innumerable souls. Whisper A Scream is a supernatural thriller with demons, cults, and time-traveling nightmares. It becomes an intense thrill-ride of suspense, seizing you until the last page, with an addictive story that falls off the edge of horror. Dread seeps into your soul as you awaken to find yourself walking down the mysterious path with Sol and cower at the sights and sounds encountered. Pray your voice is heard as you WHISPER A SCREAM!
Vietnam, 1967.
The first book in the bestselling Mark of the Lion series, A Voice in the Wind brings readers back to the first century and introduces them to a character they will never forget—Hadassah. Torn by her love for a handsome aristocrat, this young slave girl clings to her faith in the living God for deliverance from the forces of decadent Rome.
Layered Pages 