YouTube readings of Griswoldville

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve created a YouTube channel, where I’ve uploaded two readings from Griswoldville. I don’t plan to become a YouTuber—at least not on the level of some of the more active ones—but you can subscribe to the channel for readings from my books and other reading and writing related videos. I am working on short recordings from each of my novels and hope to have some more up in the following weeks.

In the meantime, I’ve embedded my first two in the post below. They come from parts I and II of Griswoldville, including scenes from the homefront while Georgie’s father is away fighting in Virginia and in the rear of the Confederate army in Georgia itself once Georgie and his grandfather and cousins Wes and Cal have been called up to the militia. I hope y’all enjoy.

Here’s a longish passage from Part II:

And here’s a couple of chapters I have read several times at public events, passages covering Georgie’s grim, dusty summer on the road with the militia during the battles for Atlanta:

As always, thanks for listening—or, in this case, watching—and please check Griswoldville out if you like what you’ve seen. You can find out more at the book’s page on my website or at Amazon.com, where you can purchase it in both paperback and Kindle formats.

Praise for Dark Full of Enemies and Griswoldville

Back in the spring I submitted my two most recent novels, Dark Full of Enemies and Griswoldville, to competition in the 27th annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. Neither won, but both scored very high in every category of assessment and I appreciated the brief feedback I got from the books’ judges earlier this month. I’ve quoted a few substantial excerpts below.

Praise for Griswoldville

“The close bond Georgie has with his grandfather, Fate, is endearing, and the reader is rooting for their strength and survival (as well as that of Georgie’s father) throughout the novel.”

— Judge, 27th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards

Griswoldville is an in-depth look at what a young boy fighting in a war of the past was really like. The author clearly did his research on the time period and the inner workings of the Georgia militia, and the prose is thoughtful and polished. We learn what it really took for farming families to survive during the Civil War era, particularly when men from the family were away from the farms for years at a time. The close bond Georgie has with his grandfather, Fate, is endearing, and the reader is rooting for their strength and survival (as well as that of Georgie’s father) throughout the novel.

Praise for Dark Full of Enemies

Dark Full of Enemies zeroes in on a seemingly small mission to the Arctic with laser-sharp focus and precision. The narrative structure, much like McKay himself, is clean, crisp, and precise, and reflects the bitter cold and stark darkness of the world around him.

“Dark Full of Enemies expertly captures the cold, dark dangers of Nazi-occupied Norway, and a Special operative team’s desperate race to complete their mission—and make it out of enemy territory alive.”

— Judge, 27th Annual WD Self-Published Book Awards

The characters, particularly the soldiers on the mission, each had their own personality, which was cleverly portrayed to the reader through minimal, yet colorful details. This was especially true of Stallings, whose troubled past guided his decisions in the present narrative, and was a character that readers could empathize with. . . .

The use of setting is clear and effective--never once is the reader unsure of where the story is taking place, or how brutally cold and inhospitable the environment is. And as the mission drags on, and the soldiers become weary from the lack of sunlight, the reader too can really sense how draining the mission is—and appreciate its completion that much more.

Dark Full of Enemies expertly captures the cold, dark dangers of Nazi-occupied Norway, and a Special operative team’s desperate race to complete their mission—and make it out of enemy territory alive.

Heading into the holidays

I appreciate Writer’s Digest taking the extra trouble to send some feedback to the entrants in the contest, and I’ve been gratified and heartened by what I read.

Finally, if you’re looking for something to give the reader in your life this Christmas, please consider Dark Full of Enemies and Griswoldville—or my other two books! They’re available through Amazon—where both have five stars—in both paperback and Kindle formats. If you’re still not quite sold and would like to read more feedback or some excerpts from the books, visit each book’s page on my website here (Dark Full of Enemies) or here (Griswoldville).

Thanks as always for reading! And I hope y’all have a good holiday season and a merry Christmas.

Griswoldville in the Laurel

I’m grateful to Tracy and John at the Georgia Mountain Laurel, a great local magazine published in my hometown, for John’s generous review of Griswoldville in the September issue. (A Rabun County bicentennial issue, no less!) The review gives a few details about my writing of the book, including the role my grandfathers played in inspiring parts of the story, as well as a brief plot synopsis and a kind recommendation. Please check out the Laurel, and do check out Griswoldville as well if the Laurel’s review piques your interest!

Thanks again to the folks at the Laurel. They’ve previously reviewed No Snakes in Iceland and Dark Full of Enemies and have been an immense encouragement as each new project has come out.

You can browse the online edition of the Laurel here (the review is on page 40 of the magazine). For more information about Griswoldville, including praise from other readers, you can look at the book’s page on my site here or visit it on Amazon here.

More reader reviews of Griswoldville

Griswoldville is almost a year old! To celebrate in the month leading up to the anniversary of its publication, here is a bit more of what folks are saying about the novel. More reader reviews of Griswoldville have been rolling in, both on Goodreads and Amazon, where it’s available in paperback and Kindle formats. You can read complete reviews here and here respectively. Here are a few samples, along with a personal note about the feedback that has meant the most to me.

Reader reviews from around the internet

First, I am deeply grateful for a good review from Sam Burnham, curator of All the Biscuits in Georgia, a website and blog dedicated to the best our mutual homestate has to offer. Reviewing Griswoldville, Sam calls it “a coming of age tale, a multi-generational drama, a war novel, and a work of historical fiction” that

“This is a book you really should read.”

— Sam Burnham, All the Biscuits in Georgia

drop[s] you into a country church, along a dirt road, around the fire at story time. You get the sights, the sounds, the smells. You find yourself in Georgia in the mid-19th century. It’s hard to come across a narrative that is so historically accurate while maintaining that personality, that soul. Griswoldville has both.

Sam also writes that Griswoldville “is a book you really should read.” You can read the whole ABG review here.

On Goodreads, Jacob writes that “Griswoldville is no typical Civil War story. The novel . . . reveals how even the often forgotten episodes of the War (like the battle of Griswoldville) forever changed the lives of soldiers like Georgie.”

Also on Goodreads, Joshua, a Macon native who knows the region in which the climactic action takes place, calls Griswoldville a “phenomenal read”:

Read cover to cover in 4 days! Well written and researched for a novel, and places the reader in a position not often covered . . . the home front of rural Georgia. The author . . . highlights the struggles of home life while most of the Southern men were away defending their loved ones. . . . Artfully describes the combat of the era, but from a human perspective rather than a historian or tactician’s view. As a native of Macon, Georgia, just southwest of Griswoldville, . . . it was obvious the author took the time to properly research the area and history, and it makes a Maconite proud.

Goodreads reviewer Sarah writes that:

“This novel is a tribute to every strong mother, father, or, in the case of Georgie, grandfather. Fate, Georgie’s grandfather, is an unforgettable character.”

— Goodreads reviewer Sarah

This novel works on several levels. First, as a coming-of-age novel, Griswoldville captures the passage from boy to man. The backdrop of the war and then Reconstruction works splendidly for Georgie’s transformation. Second, the [toll] of a war on the people involved seemed heartbreaking. Not having been in a war myself, I can only imagine the pain and sorrow that must follow those who take up arms. The novel helped me imagine that burden. Finally, the beautiful family ties that Georgie describes make me want to love on my own family. In some ways, this novel is a tribute to every strong mother, father, or, in the case of Georgie, grandfather. Fate, Georgie’s grandfather, is an unforgettable character.

And speaking of Lafayette “Fate” Eschenbach, Amazon reviewer Jacob Johnson writes that:

Fate reminds me a lot of my own grandfather, and as he is going through a tough time of his own I was able to use Fate’s storyline as a coping mechanism. I found a lot of similarities between Fate and my own grandfather, and that hit me more than I was expecting. . . . Seeing how a grandson looked up to his grandfather reminded me a lot of how I look up to my grandfather. The other areas of this book are great as well. The detail that goes into the battles, the connections with cousins and friends in the town, and even a little bit of Georgie’s years after the war as he ages makes this novel a great read for anyone looking to immediately be drawn in. I highly recommend this book.

He also writes that Griswoldville is “an excellent read not only for me as an Education/History major, but just for anyone who enjoys quality literature.” He recommends it “to anyone wanting to read a little bit about one of the lost battles of the Civil War,” and Joshua concludes his review by recommending the book “to ANYONE with a passion for this time period, and especially the local and state history of Georgia.”

A personal note

I’m thankful to have written Griswoldville and especially thankful to share it with such readers. The feedback I’ve gotten in the last year has been deeply gratifying for a couple of reasons.

First, readers have seen in Griswoldville what I most hoped they would—a story about memory, love of home and family, coming of age and taking on responsibility, living with loss and experiencing redemption. Second, people in both online reviews and speaking to me personally have told me how much the relationships in the novel meant to them, especially that between Georgie and Fate, with a few describing their relationships with their own grandfathers in similar terms. One told me that Griswoldville has helped him cope with his grandfather’s physical decline and approaching death. Others have told me about stories about their own grandfathers and the ways they filled the roles played by Fate in my book.

Similarly, I’ve been told by one reader, a South Carolina native with deep roots in Georgia, that his wife, a native of upstate New York, read the book and told him that she suddenly understood him and what made him tick as a man raised in the South. If Griswoldville is also a plea for understanding our ancestors, this is one of the most profoundly moving bits of feedback I’ve received.

It’s this kind of feedback—the personal kind, where I’ve struck on something that resonated with people and turned their minds toward the men who helped raise and teach them and the place and culture that shaped them—that has meant the most to me. I’m grateful to y’all for sharing your responses with me.

Thanks as always for reading! If you haven’t read Griswoldville, please do, and leave an honest review so that the word can continue to spread. I look forward to more and will update y’all as feedback comes my way.

Reading and book signing in Greenwood, SC

I’m excited to announce an upcoming event. Wednesday, April 3 I’ll be doing a reading and book signing in Greenwood, South Carolina. The main library of Piedmont Tech’s Lex Walters Campus is hosting me. I plan to read a chapter from Griswoldville, my most recent novel, but will have copies of all of my books available. The basic facts:

Who: Me

What: Reading and book signing

When: 12:45-1:30 Wednesday, April 3

Where: The library at the Piedmont Tech main campus in Greenwood, South Carolina

Sign up on Facebook here. You can check out each of my books here on my website or on my author page at Amazon. Click here for an excerpt from Griswoldville (I’ll read a different passage when the big day arrives).

I’m grateful to PTC for this opportunity and really looking forward to it. Please join us!

What readers say about Griswoldville

Griswoldville has been out for a little over three months now, since the beginning of September, and the first reader reviews are coming in! It currently has 4.5 stars on Goodreads and five at Amazon. Here’s a little of what readers have said in their reviews:

Wayne, who is not only the first reviewer to post on Amazon but also the descendant of a soldier killed in the Battle of Griswoldville, calls the novel “beautifully written and compelling.” He writes:

Although I often have been disappointed with historical fiction, and generally read non-fiction, I decided to give Griswoldville a try. The historical background is familiar to me, particularly since I lost a 55 year old great-great grandfather in that tragic battle. [Jordan] Poss relates this American tragedy in a compelling, insightful manner. He advances the narrative wonderfully through compelling, very realistic characters. His prose is poetic at times, but spare and real.

Jay, friend of the site and frequent fellow guest on Sectarian Review, reviewing Griswoldville on Goodreads, calls it “particularly readable” and “a distinctly Southern tale,” “a solid novel that should provide several hours’ pleasure to academic and amateur history buff alike.”

Rob, a South Carolina native reviewing the book on Goodreads, enjoyed “how the author took a footnote from history and turned what has been deemed an insignificant ‘battle’ into the most significant point of one man's story.” He writes that Griswoldville “captured so well the rural south that I grew up knowing, with all its joys and all its faults”:

Growing up as a young southern boy I often fascinated over what I would have done had I lived during the Civil War, and I was drawn to the gallantry and the heroism of soldiering, of war, and of battle. Poss does a great job of recognizing that thinking within all boys as he creates the character of Georgie Wax. It was easy for me to put myself in the shoes of Georgie with all of his thoughts and uncertainties. I love how Poss develops this character throughout the novel. I found myself revisiting my "growing up years" as I wrestled with life alongside Georgie Wax. This was a novel that resonates with the experience of every boy, no matter when you grew up.

He also enjoyed “the biblical theme of redemption which “was woven beautifully into the narrative” as well as Georgie’s relationship with his grandfather, Fate: “This relationship is important to me because it was my relationship with my own grandfather that was the most significant of my young life. The beauty of this relationship brought tears to my eyes!”

Amazon reviewer HuntSouth writes that “it was difficult to set this book aside” and that they loved “the readability of this book, the beautiful word smithing, and the challenge it lays out to me—to discover more about the events and the books described within it.” HuntSouth particularly appreciated Georgie and Fate, the narrator and his grandfather:

The realities of farm life and the rigors of army life, Georgie’s love of all things chivalrous, heroic and adventuresome combine to make Georgie a wholly believable militiaman, by the time he is thirteen. You will love him, his family and the nobility with which Jordan Poss imbues him. Poss is so descriptive—without being wordy—that you will carry the picture of this north Georgia setting with you, fondly. His vast vocabulary and knowledge of unique Southern practice and history come through seamlessly on every page. Responsibility, family, boyish idealism, honest emotion, the profane and the sacred all come together in a highly readable book for lovers of good storytelling.

I’m grateful for these readers, the time they invested in my story, and their kind, generous reviews, and thankful as well for everyone who has told me in person how much they enjoyed the book. Please leave a review for Griswoldville if you’ve read it, and if you haven’t, please pick up a copy! It’s available in both paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon. Enjoy!

Christmas giveaway

For Christmas we’re giving away a set of all three of my novel-length works: Viking Age ghost story No Snakes in Iceland, World War II thriller Dark Full of Enemies, and my latest, Civil War coming of age story Griswoldville. To enter, simply visit my official Facebook page, find the photo of all three books posted above, and like it. That’s it. One entry could win you three books!

You can find out more about each book here on my website—I’ve linked each book’s page above—or by clicking through to my author pages on Amazon or Goodreads, where you can also see what previous readers think.

The giveaway ends Friday, December 14. The winner’s name will be drawn randomly and contacted directly via DM. You don’t have to share, tag, or like anything else to enter.

Best of luck, and thanks for reading!

Griswoldville giveaway!

Griswoldville has been out for a month! To celebrate we’re giving away five signed copies of the novel here on the website. Enter between now and October 18 for a chance to win a copy! Open to US residents only.

Alternately, you can always skip the wait and the odds and order a copy!

As always, thanks for reading!

An exclusive excerpt from Griswoldville

In case you missed it, a few days ago I made an excerpt from my newest novel, Griswoldville, available on my website. Click here to read it, or click here for more information about the novel.

The excerpt is two short chapters from Part III: Miles Gloriosus. The narrator, Georgie Wax, has been conscripted into the Georgia militia along with his grandfather, Lafayette “Fate” Eschenbach, and his cousins Wes and Cal. While their grandfather has experience in a wartime militia from decades before, Georgie, Wes, and Cal have a lot to learn, and find that war is not as glorious or as fun as its reputation suggests, and the cost of war is enormous.

If you’ve been following this blog, the excerpt includes the section about heraldry I wrote about here several months ago.

Give the excerpt a look! I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please do get yourself a copy of Griswoldville. It’s a story that’s been interesting and important to me for a long time, and I’m excited to have finished the book and finally made it available.

As always, thanks for reading!

Griswoldville has arrived!

I'm thrilled to announce that the long-awaited day is come: my latest novel, Griswoldville, is now available! You can find it in both paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.

A lot has happened since I started working on this project several years ago and in the two years since I began the actual writing. Work has slowed almost to a stop several times, especially with the birth of our second child last summer. But I'm thankful to say that with a little time set aside and with the support and encouragement of my family, especially my wife, Sarah, I've gotten the thing written, revised, designed, and published, and I'm excited to make it available to my readers.

The story is set in my home state, Georgia, during the American Civil War, and follows a family of the yeomanry—the class of small family farmers that made up the vast majority of white Southerners—through the travails of the war. That narrator, Georgie Wax, is the eldest of three brothers and is tasked with looking after the family farm when his father leaves for the war in the summer of 1861. His maternal grandfather, Fate Eschenbach, moves in with them, and together they take care of the hard work necessary to survive, right up until they are drafted into the state militia.

With Sherman's western army closing in from the north in the summer of 1864, Georgie, his grandfather, and their friends and family are set on a collision course with the ugly truth of war, combat, and the toll taken by both on ordinary people.

The book's description, from the back cover:

Madison Co., Georgia, 1864—14-year old Georgie Wax has spent the three years since his father left for the war looking after the family farm. With his mother and young brothers, Georgie and his grandfather Lafayette “Fate” Eschenbach have brought in the crops every fall, slaughtered the hogs every winter, and kept the farm running as the faraway war stretches on longer and longer and his father seems ever farther and farther away.

But when the enemy reaches their own state, Georgie and his grandfather are called up to the militia to protect Georgia against the invaders. Drilled mercilessly, mocked for lack of experience, and put to work at manual labor, Georgie finds war isn’t the adventure he imagined it to be. Only with Atlanta fallen and the enemy on the move will Georgie, Fate, and their fellow Georgia militiamen find a chance to prove themselves and save their homes from destruction—at a railside factory town called Griswoldville.

I hope y'all enjoy Griswoldville! If you do, please do me the favor of writing a short but honest review. As always, thanks for reading!

My top nine Civil War novels

For the upcoming release of Griswoldville, here’s a list of my personal favorites from the vast body of Civil War literature. This is by no means an exhaustive list—there's a lot of good stuff out there and plenty I still haven’t read, like Thomas Keneally’s Confederates, Mackinlay Kantor’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Andersonville, or even Gone With the Wind—but simply a list of the books I’ve been most moved by, have most enjoyed, and have most often returned to over the years.

So here, in no particular order, are my nine favorite Civil War novels, with a few honorable mentions or bonuses thrown in just because:

Rifles for Watie, by Harold Keith

My mom ordered Rifles for Watie from the God’s World Book Club flyer when I was in fourth or fifth grade. I remember plowing through the novel, simultaneously disappointed that it did not take place in the Civil War I was familiar with—the Eastern Theatre—and fascinated by the war it did depict. Rifles for Watie is a story of intrigue, in which Jeff Bussey, a young Union soldier, infiltrates the Confederate Indian cavalry of Stand Watie, a Cherokee leader. Watie hopes to acquire repeating rifles for his cavalry troopers, and Jeff, despite the friendships he has formed, must stop him. The novel respectfully depicts the Cherokees, their attitudes toward the war, and the chaotic Western Theatre, and is unusually realistic for children’s fiction thanks to the author’s many interviews with elderly Civil War veterans. Rifles for Watie won the Newbery Medal in 1958. 

Also recommended: The Perilous Road, by William O. Steele, about a young pro-Confederate Tennessean who discovers his brother has joined the Yankees; G. Clifton Wisler’s Red Cap, the story of a drummer boy imprisoned in Andersonville; and Brotherhood, by Anne Westrick, a daring novel about a boy in post-war Richmond who finds his humanity tested when his brother joins the Ku Klux Klan.

Shiloh, by Shelby Foote

If you find yourself daunted, as I do, by the sheer size of the late Shelby Foote’s three-volume, 2,900 page, 1.2 million word The Civil War: A Narrative, start with Shiloh instead. Shiloh is a short, beautifully written and poignant novel taking place across about three days but encompassing the beginning of the war, the secession crisis, and the conflicts within the United States as a whole. Told through multiple points of view, from commanding generals on down to yeoman privates and a squad of volunteers, Foote’s novel gives you glimpses of all the major events of the battle through several perspectives and hints broadly, because of the battle’s course and results, at what the outcome of the war must be. More importantly, it brings you into the battle, giving you that difficult to achieve feeling of what it must have been like, to make you understand the experiences of the soldiers themselves. A great book.

Also recommended: Shelby Foote also edited Chickamauga and Other Civil War Stories, a collection of short stories from authors including Ambrose Bierce, Thomas Wolfe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Eudora Welty. More about Bierce below.

The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

I came to The Killer Angels through Gettysburg, the 1993 film adaptation. As a kid I had a VHS copy of the movie, recorded off TNT, which I watched on a near endless loop, but when I finally read the novel I found the only thing superior to the film. Shaara’s book is much like Foote’s Shiloh in that it is the dramatic, beautifully written story of a single battle that, through its multiple points of view, offers a sweeping look at the whole war. But it differs from Shiloh in its scope thanks to the sheer scale of the battle, the largest ever fought in North America, and in the thoughtful, melancholy introspection of its major characters, especially James Longstreet, Lewis Armistead, and Joshua Chamberlain. One of the most popular Civil War novels ever published, justifiably so, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975.

Also recommended: Promise of Glory, by C.X. Moreau, covers the September 1862 Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam) and owes a lot to The Killer Angels in terms of structure, focus, and tone. Promise of Glory doesn't reach the heights of Shaara's work, but it’s a solid fictional recreation of another important moment of the war.

The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

Justly regarded as a classic, The Red Badge of Courage suffers somewhat from its near constant presence in high school reading lists. This is the story of Henry Fleming, a young Union army private, and his experiences during the (unnamed) Battle of Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. While Crane was not a veteran of the war, he did his homework and crafted a short novel of unflinching psychological realism, capturing every vicissitude of dread, cowardice, and reckless courage over the day or so that Fleming wanders through the battlefield. While this novel clearly made later works of grim, realistic war fiction like The Naked and the Dead possible, Crane’s story is apolitical, unembittered by ideology, and narrowly focused on one thing—courage—and what it means. Actual veterans praised Crane’s work, and it’s still worth reading a century on.

Also recommended: Ambrose Bierce, an older contemporary of Crane and a veteran of the war's western theatre, wrote a number of short stories based on his experiences. “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” is an early stream-of-consciousness story about a Confederate saboteur who is about to be hanged, and “Chickamauga” depicts the horrific aftermath of battle as seen by a child. Bierce’s image of the wounded and their terrible suffering still haunt me from reading this as a kid.

Traveller, by Richard Adams

Probably the strangest book on this list, and one of the strangest I routinely recommend, Traveller is the story of Robert E. Lee—as told by his horse. Adams, who is most famous for his other animal epic, Watership Down, retells the course of the war through a goodhearted but ignorant animal witness. Through Traveller we get a narrative of the majority of the major campaigns of the Eastern Theatre from an unusual perspective. It sounds goofy, but the story works well because it brings a fresh sense of pathos to the war through a narrator who only half understands what is going on. In a half-comic, half-tragic irony, Traveller ends the war thinking his side has won, and the note of triumph he brings to his storytelling only deepens the reader's sense of loss. Surprisingly engaging, and even more surprisingly moving.

Also recommended: For another outside angle on a major Civil War figure, read A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, by Stephen Harrigan. This novel offers a portrait of Abraham Lincoln as a young, ambitious frontier lawyer and brims with colorful real life characters and incidents even if the narrator, a failed New England poet, is fictional. Though the story transpires decades before the war, this novel, like Traveller, is freighted with irony and sadness because of what we know is coming.  

Woe to Live On, by Daniel Woodrell

Like Rifles for Watie, mentioned above, Woe to Live On tells a story from an out-of-the-way corner of the war, one where most of the usual narratives and assumptions about North and South don’t apply. Set in Missouri, the novel follows Jake Roedel, son of a German immigrant, his best friend Jack Bull Chiles, their planter friend George, and George's slave Daniel as they fight with a group of Bushwhackers, Confederate guerrillas led by Col. William Quantrill, in the confused, morally grey irregular warfare of the back country. Rivalry with other fighters, the Lawrence Massacre of August 1863, liberation, friendship, love, death, and birth all play a part in this dramatic, surprisingly funny, and moving novel. Woe to Live On is also the basis of Ride With the Devil, a film adaptation directed by Ang Lee.

Also recommended: While taking place postbellum, True Grit, by the great Charles Portis, is deeply informed by the war. The narrator Mattie's father was a Confederate veteran, as is Texas Ranger LaBoeuf. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, who refers to hanging Judge Parker as “an old carpetbagger,” lost his eye while fighting with Quantrill’s bushwhackers in Missouri, an often overlooked bit of characterization.

Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

A combination of Homer and Appalachian family lore, Cold Mountain tells the parallel stories of Inman, a Confederate soldier returning to his home in western North Carolina as a deserter in late 1864, and Ada, his beloved, who is working desperately to keep her farm afloat after the unexpected death of her minister father. Episodic in the manner of the Odyssey, with grotesque and monstrous dangers along the way, Cold Mountain is full of brilliantly realized characters and evokes both a real time and place—and their dangers—as well as the world of myth. It’s a magnificent novel, full of longing, hope, melancholy, and meditation on danger and death, and deservedly won the National Book Award in 1997.

Also recommended: The Second Mrs. Hockaday, by Susan Rivers, tells the story of the teenage wife of a Confederate officer who is recalled to his regiment the day after their wedding. Through letters, diary entries, and court records, a mystery involving adultery, slavery, hidden pregnancy, and murder uncoils across the decades following the war. I didn’t quite buy the ending, but the novel is a powerfully evocative and brings postbellum piedmont South Carolina to life.

The Black Flower and The Judas Field, by Howard Bahr

These are the books I’ve most recently discovered, and how I missed them until two years ago I don’t know. The central event of each is the disastrous 1864 Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, a few hours of appalling waste that shape the rest the characters’ lives. The Black Flower, Bahr’s first novel, takes place over the day of the battle and follows Bushrod Carter, a teenage private, and Anna Hereford, a young woman staying with cousins at a house near the center of the battlefield. The Judas Field is the post-war story of Cass Wakefield, a middle-aged veteran, as he accompanies a dying friend on her quest to find the bodies of her brother and father. Both are powerful, beautifully written works that evoke the time and place well and bring home the war’s horror, pain, and overwhelming loss—the war’s fruits for most of the ordinary people who took part.

Also recommended: The Year of Jubilo, by Howard Bahr, the second book of this loose trilogy, centers on the return of Private Gawain Harper to Mississippi after the war. Harper hopes to marry his sweetheart, but her father will only consent if he helps kill the brutal leader of the local Home Guard. Another vivid evocation of early Reconstruction.

Griswoldville is in the final stages of proofing and will be available soon. I hope you'll read and enjoy it, and that you'll check out some of these other great books as well. Thanks for reading!

Addenda

Since writing this post I have read Andersonville, which may not quite crack my top nine but is an epic of the kind American writers don’t produce any more. You can read my review here. I’ve also read the first two novels in Ralph Peters’s Battle Hymn series, Cain at Gettysburg and Hell or Richmond, and both are excellent. I hope to review the entire series once I’ve finished it.

Also, Griswoldville came out just over a month after I published this post. My readers have given it generous reviews. Please do check it out! It’s available in both paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon. Click here to shop for it, or read more about it, including a collection of reader comments, by clicking here. I’ve also published two excerpts on my website that you can read here and here. Thanks again!

The first Griswoldville proofs arrive

The first proof copies of Griswoldville arrived today! I'm thrilled with how they look and can't wait to complete the proofing and correction process to get these out to y'all. Enjoy the mini-gallery below as a bit of a sneak peek. More news to come!