American Civil War Fiction

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 ...

A swashbuckling adventure set in the real history of the American Civil War where love, honor, and friendship are tested in the madness and chaos of war. A reluctant Yankee must team up with his old Confederate classmate to save someone very dear from certain death. Rampage on the River brings to life the real battles of Fort Donelson, New Madrid, and Island No. 10, where the Confederates make their stand against dreaded Federal Ironclads to stop the Yankee invasion. Rampage on the River is the first book in a series that follows the exploits of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry through the American...

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.

Everyone has heard of the bloody conflict that cost the lives of over one million people. When people think of the Civil War, they think of Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the North-South divide between the American states, but there is so much more to uncover about the American Civil War.

Nona “Peaches” Davenport, abandoned by the man she loved and betrayed by family, left her Natchez, Mississippi, home fifteen years ago and never looked back. She’s forged a promising future in Chicago as a professor of African American Studies. Nona even finds her once-closed heart persuaded by a new love. But that’s all shaken when her father’s death forces her to return to everything she’s tried to forget.

Heartbreak and hope—set against the backdrop of a war-torn country. War has taken everything from Russ Fields - his brother, half of his face, and now his sister. But when he receives a reply to his letter of sorrow, he never imagined it would lead to something more. Emmie Mason has also lost everything - her fiancé, her job, and her closest friend. But when she responds to a letter of condolence, she never expected it to bring a glimmer of hope. As their letters continue, a bond forms between Russ and Emmie, two souls who have suffered unimaginable losses. But can their words bridge the...

Many Americans, argues Michael C. C. Adams, tend to think of the Civil War as more glorious, less awful, than the reality. In Living Hell, Adams tries a different tack, clustering the voices of myriad actual participants on the firing line or in the hospital ward to create a virtual historical reenactment. Neither film nor reenactment can fully capture the hard truth of the four-year conflict. Living Hell presents a stark portrait of the human costs of the Civil War and gives listeners a more accurate appreciation of its lasting consequences.

The Forgotten First Black Hero of the Civil War André and Felicie Cailloux find themselves in the center of a tempest when the Union army sweeps into the city of New Orleans in 1862. Based on real events and real people, The Dixie Devil tells the remarkable story of Captain Cailloux and his wife, Felicie, as they try to protect their family from the forces swirling all around them. Today, André and Felicie Cailloux are forgotten names, but André was the first black hero in the very first African-American regiment to see major action in the Civil War. Included in this volatile mix is a ...

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 ...

In the 1860's, Anastasia Ambrose returns to her family's horse breeding farm in Northwest Indiana after her lover abandons her and her daughter. She hopes to take over her father's horse and carriage business in town only to find that after his passing in the Civil War her mother sold everything off. In need of a way to support herself and her baby, Anastasia heads to Vanatta & Sons Horse and Carriage Dealership to ask for a job. There, she discovers her passion for horses and a desire to be a part of her father's dream. Her goals are clear; get out of her oppressive mother's home and help ...

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.

Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son, Daniel, one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out La Sombra del Viento by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find.

Soldiers called it one of the “waste places of nature” and “a region of gloom” - the wilderness of Virginia, 70 square miles of dense second-growth forest known as “the dark, close wood”. Here, in the spring of 1864, the Civil War escalated to a new level of horror. Ulysses S. Grant, commanding all Federal armies, opened the campaign with a vow to never turn back. Robert E. Lee, commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, moved into the wilderness to block Grant’s advance. Immovable object intercepted irresistible force - and the wilderness burst into flame.

In post-Civil War New York City, sixteen-year-old Aislynn Denehy cannot find a job, she has no place to live and no family to help her. Some might think this is a problem; Aislynn believes it is an opportunity. No formulaic romance, this well-researched love story depicts life as it truly was for the thousands of women who went west reaching for a new life. Aislynn's journey begins in a New York City tenement and leads her across the frontier to a Utah mining camp where she must cope with the three very different men in her life: smart, solicitous Tim; good-natured, good-guy Johnny; and the intense but intriguing Liam Moran. Life in the roughshod camp brings small joys and devastating losses. Susan Denning's engaging debut novel races through authentic experiences involving historical events until it erupts in an unexpected ending.

This is the original diary of the wife of Confederate General James Chesnut, Jr., who was an aide to President Jefferson Davis. It is a fascinating narrative of all the years of the American Civil War. It focuses on the daily lives and hardships of all who suffered through the war, from ordinary people to the Confederacy's generals and political elite. Mary Chesnut's prose has lost none of its provocative bite through the ages.

America, 1861. Battle lines have been drawn between the North and the South, pitting state against state - and brother against brother. For the three young sons of Ohio State Senator Clay Bell, the Civil War would change not only their lives, but the destinies of future generations. Jacob Bell, the eldest, defies his father's wishes to run the family law practice and enlists in Ohio's Volunteer Calvary, a decision that wins him the love of an officer's daughter - and the hatred of a dangerous childhood rival.

Young Henry Fleming used to play soldier and dream of being a hero, but when he faces his first battle - the Battle of Chancellorsville - he finds that heroism is not at all what he had expected. Shells burst in front of him like strange flowers, gunfire ripped toward him in great crackling sheets of flame, and all around him, blue-coated figures lie still on the blood-drenched grass. Remarkably, Stephen Crane wrote this realistic tale of the terror of war without ever witnessing a battle.

They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the 20th century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.

A Southern war widow seeking to reinvent herself in the West. A Union cavalryman haunted by his deeds. Can they survive a thousand-mile journey beset by bandits and warring Sioux to discover a life together? After losing everything in the war, Annabelle sets out with her extended family on a wagon train for the goldfields in Montana. Helping to lead the way is Josey Angel, whose reputation as a notorious killer is belied by a thoughtful manner and wounded soul. A bond grows as they tend to the settlers’ needs—until secrets from Annabelle’s past provoke new dangers and the frontier ...

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...