American Civil War Fiction

Clyde “The Kid” Cunningham never planned on returning to his hometown of Tucson, Arizona. He had ran away from home for good reason, after the horrific murder of his father by a disgruntled neighbor over three acres of farmland. After his own life was threatened, Clyde did what any fifteen-year-old would have done – he jumped on his horse and rode as far as he could. After ten years of living in New Mexico, Clyde and the Navajo family who had taken him in came to Tucson in an effort to get a fresh start. However, Clyde quickly learns that fresh starts aren’t as simple as they should...

Dances with Wolves meets the story of Job in this gripping historical epic of tragedy, loss, and redemption. Georgia, 1861. As the tides of war sweep south, Aidan MacAlister is drawn north like water up a reed by the inexorable pull to defend his land. After tragedy strikes at Gettysburg, Aidan spirals into unfamiliar, dark places of unbridled fury, earning him the nickname, the Fourth Horseman. A hero to his fellow soldiers, Aidan’s self-loathing consumes him, and every lesson his family taught him crumbles to dust beneath its weight. Aidan returns to the farm to find it ravaged by ...

Ruth’s beau died - simply because he was a slave.She is determined to help other enslaved people as she assists with the Underground Railroad. Recently freed and illiterate, Ruth is hired to bake mouth-watering delicious bread in a Philadelphia bakery. Her boss Joseph is kind, handsome, and determined to put an end to slavery. She feels emotionally connected to him as they work together for a common cause. His presence is like a fresh splash of spring rain on her parched soul. However, Joseph has plans. He’s determined to make some major changes in his life. He desperately wants to ...

The Civil War tore at the very roots of our nation and destroyed most of a generation. In rural Arkansas, the Hancocks were devastated by that war. They not only lost everything, but experienced an unimaginable hell. How does a traumatized human being put themselves back together? Where does a person begin to heal his or her broken mind…and does one choose damnation or redemption? For the Hancock siblings: Doc, Sarah, Butler, and Billy, the American frontier becomes a metaphor for the wilderness within—raw, and capable of being shaped.

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

Maryland was a pivotal state during the early days of America's Civil War. If she joined the South—as a majority of her legislators wished—Washington City would be surrounded by a Southern Confederacy. The loss to the Federal Union's prestige abroad could lead to a wave of diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy among the European powers. Similarly, the Federal Government's exiled status might have caused its constituent states to doubt the wisdom of prosecuting a Civl War, particularly after their army was decisively beaten at the battle of Bull Run near Washington City on July 21, ...

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.

Through historical newspaper accounts and the personal letters of soldiers, the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself are stunningly recreated. You will enter the mind of Robert E. Lee as he makes the fateful decision to cross the Potomac River and take the offensive. You will feel the frustration of Abraham Lincoln as he struggles to convince George McClellan to fight. And you will stand side-by-side with foot soldiers as the peaceful Maryland countryside explodes.

Raiding with Morgan is an historical Civil War novel set in 1863; it focused of the invasion of Indiana and Ohio by Confederate cavalrymen commanded by General John Hunt Morgan a.k.a. the infamous Morgan's Raiders. Ty Mattson never knew his father who went off to fight in the Mexican War and never returned; and Ty's mother died giving birth to Ty. For 17 years, Ty wonders why his father never acknowledges his existence. Ty learns that his father joined Morgan's Raiders, so Ty decides to follow suit in the hope of meeting his father, which he does.

When justice slumbers, vengeance rides… When Gideon Ward returns to Edgewood to bury his murdered sister, he finds a town strangled by fear. Malcolm Bryce, a ruthless ranch baron, rules through intimidation and bloodshed, while the law turns a blind eye to the mounting body count. Though haunted by his violent past in the Civil War, Gideon must decide whether to honor his late father's pacifism, or embrace the brutal justice the frontier demands. As smaller ranchers face burning barns and deadly accidents, Gideon soon discovers that his sister's death points to an ugly conspiracy. With ...

Seventeen-year-old Jake Casey has always been the shield for his family – until the day outlaw Fisher Grady burns his home to the ground and murders his parents. With his younger brothers in tow, Jake flees into the unforgiving wilderness, his heart set on one thing: vengeance. But the path to justice is anything but simple. When Jake crosses paths with Elijah Redfeather, an Apache boy with his own blood feud against Fisher, the two form an uneasy alliance. Together, they navigate a land riddled with danger, where Fisher’s influence stretches far and wide. The outlaw has bought the ...

In Wade in the Water, Tracy K. Smith boldly ties America's contemporary moment both to our nation's fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting. These are poems of sliding scale: some capture a flicker of song or memory; some collage an array of documents and voices; and some push past the known world into the haunted, the holy. Smith's signature voice - inquisitive, lyrical, and wry - turns over what it means to be a citizen, a mother, and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men, and violence.

The Secret Side of the Civil War John Scobell, a former slave, works as a spy for the Union, collecting secrets in northern Virginia as the Civil War marches down upon the land. But he has no idea that Peg, the wife he left behind in Richmond, has also become a Union spy operating in the heart of the Confederacy. The Lincoln League is based on the true story of John Scobell, the first African-American spy in the U.S. intelligence service. This thrilling novel also tells the little-known story of the Lincoln League, a network of African-American spies. In the beginning, John saw the war as a...

The Nine. Scattered across the Indian Territory. US Marshal Caleb Maddox has been warned against going after them. After a brutal train robbery by the Harvey Gang leaves his best friend dead, Caleb is determined to bring the nine outlaws to justice. Led by Cutter Ray Harvey, robbing that train was just another day’s work for him and his eight desperados. And leaving the innocent dead? A regular occurrence. With the sting of his friend’s death still fresh, Caleb hunts the nine outlaws in their hideouts across the Indian Territory and takes them all down. One by one. But after finding the...

Americans can’t get along anymore. That’s what everybody said. Better to separate than to burn. Or is it? Political parties took the law into their own hands, to solve our problems for us. Only they didn’t solve them, they encouraged the very behavior that tore us apart. They played referee for a fight they started, a fight they wanted. It was too late to turn back. Anderson poured his soul onto the page, trying to put into words what happened to his beloved America. Kelso just wanted to run his store in peace. Jackson learned how victimhood worked, and no longer wanted any part of it...

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act.

Haunted by the murder of his wife and daughter, former lawman John Turner rides into Blackstone – a town suffocating under the iron fist of Roderick Garrison and his ruthless gang. Blackstone is a place of shattered hope, where extortion and violence reign. The sheriff is wounded, the townsfolk are desperate, and the women and children suffer most of all. Among them is Emma Dawson, a widow whose strength and kindness rekindle a spark of hope John thought was lost forever. When John witnesses their pain, he can’t turn away. But taking on Roderick’s gang won’t be easy. Mason Hawkins, ...

The first installment in a sweeping family saga that will convey the reader through the drama and sorrow of the American Civil War. Follow the members of one Pittsburgh family as they embark on a journey through America's most consequential and searing experience. From the halls of Congress to the bloody fields of battle, from the windswept decks of gunboats to the solitude of Lincoln's telegraph office, The Heavens Falling will transport you into the middle of this harrowing American experience, while plumbing the deepest depths of its meaning for the world of today.

Operating in the vast and varied trans-Appalachian west, the Army of Tennessee was crucially important to the military fate of the Confederacy. But under the principal leadership of generals such as Braxton Bragg, Joseph E. Johnston, and John Bell Hood, it won few major battles, and many regard its inability to halt steady Union advances into the Confederate heartland as a matter of failed leadership.

Now that the devasting pandemic has subsided, and the election is over, Americans are eager to return to normal. But, with a stunning decision, the Supreme Court has just thrown the country into pandemonium. Under a shroud of chaos and despair, lines are drawn, and sides are chosen. As the United States begins to unravel, rogue militias march across the nation closing borders and threatening citizens. Laws are flagrantly broken by those who vowed to uphold them. Innocent citizens are kidnapped, some are killed. And, the US President is calling the shots. In disparate corners of the country,...