American Civil War Fiction

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.

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, ...

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...

It was the most remarkable political about-face in American history. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy. He was alongside Lee at Gettysburg (and counseled him not to order the ill-fated attacks on entrenched Union forces there). He won a major Confederate victory at Chickamauga and was seriously wounded during a later battle.

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.

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.

Few events have sparked more legends and stories of the supernatural than America's Civil War. The accounts of gallantry and heroism have spread far and wide. Nancy Roberts grew up listening to her father's stories of the War Between the States, and she trekked over many battle sites with him during her childhood. After reading about General Joshua Chamberlain's supernatural experience at the Battle of Gettysburg, Roberts began to collect tales of the blue and gray and write them down.

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.

This fictional recreation of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 is a stunning work of imaginative history, from Shelby Foote, beloved historian of the Civil War. Shiloh conveys not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants' hearts and minds.

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 ...

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.

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...

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 ...

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...

John Bell Hood had done his job too well. In the fall of 1864, the commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee had harassed Federal forces in North Georgia so badly that the Union commander, William T. Sherman, decided to abandon his position. During his subsequent “March to the Sea”, Sherman’s men lived off the land and made Georgia howl. Rather than confront the larger Federal force directly, Hood chose instead to strike northward into Tennessee.

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, ...

Never steal from the poor and never shoot a man in the back. Horse thief Chase McGraw lives by these rules, but they don’t stop the noose from tightening around his neck after he’s caught stealing purebred horses from cattle baron Edwin Kensington. His only way out? A devil’s bargain: recover a stolen herd from ruthless outlaw Brenner Pike, or swing at dawn. Chase is forced to partner with Takoda, a quiet Indian with secrets of his own for helping. Their shaky alliance is further tested by the arrival of Eliza Hart, a frontier doctor with her own vendetta against Pike. But Pike’s no...

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,...

Josephine "Jojo" Best has it all figured out. Just 17, she's been to college, she has her own hairdressing shop, and nothing will distract her from her goals. That is, until handsome George Brooks begins to pursue her. Then the return of her childhood nemesis complicates her life even further. No girl is immune to Adam Morgan's charm. But when a wound brings him home from the War Between the States, it's a girl he used to call "Pest" who's turning the tables. All grown up, Jojo is being courted by another soldier, and Adam knows it would be foolish to play with her heart.