Unlike most Tar Heel boys, a North Carolina teenager isn't eager to join the Confederate Army in 1862. But the stern father of his sweetheart changes the boy's mind... no courting unless he joins up.
In 1862, Bill Stamford isn't your typical southern teenager. The North Carolina boy comes from a divided family, an Ohio mother and a Tar Heel father who is a newspaper editor. At a church picnic, Bill is taken by the beauty of a girl from a neighboring town, and seek to court her. However, the girl's father makes a demand. Bill can court her, but only if he enlists in General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
So Bill follows the father's advice and joins the 18th North Carolina Regiment. In the months ahead, he'll find himself struggling to survive the horrors of the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville and the rigors of winter camp.
Excerpt
By ten o’clock sunlight had burned away the fog cloaking the fields in front of A.P. Hill’s breastworks. Blue-Bellies moved parallel to the Rappahannock, then right-faced toward Richmond Road. Booms erupted. On the extreme right of the Confederate line, two Virginia mobile artillery pieces, each harnessed to their team of six horses, wheeled down Prospect Hill. Bouncing, sliding, the caissons and gun carriages kicked up dirt, stubble and foliage. They creaked and groaned as they dashed toward the Blue-Bellies. Yankee twelve-pounders fired at them, their shells missing. Juddering to a stop, the gun crews unlimbered the rifled Blakely and twelve-pound Napoleon. With Yankee Springfields and artillery firing at them, the Virginians coolly loaded and primed their pieces. Black-powder smoke rings spewed from the barrels. The air thundered; Union infantry scattered like tumbling bowling pins.
“Sweet Jesus those men are brave!” Daniel exclaimed. “Twenty men against the entire Union army.”
“More like a Blue-Belly regiment,” Kenny retorted dryly, then grinned. “Still impressive I must say.”
A cannonball rumbling across the ground smashed into the Blakely, splintering a wheel and gun carriage. Its barrel lay on the ground, muzzle half-buried in the dirt. Horses went down; shrieking; they struggled to rise. Two gunners lay unmoving in pools of blood, rammer and wormer splayed on their legs.
“Daring yes, but it’s time to withdraw,” Bill said, amazed that two field pieces were holding up the Yankee offensive.
Welcome to AD, hope to see more of your work soon.
Mebbe a short story or two, a poem, an article to bring more attention to your den.
Wishes for much success with your book! WBTS is always grist for a good novel, and/or historical write
Never Stop Writing!!
m
Reviewed by Michael Hartnett
4/16/2018
A Thinking Man’s Civil War Novel
As our protagonist Bill explains, “These shadows, the darkness, these deep woods . . . they make me nervous.” And well they should because Bill is right in the thick of the tumultuous battles and times of the Civil War as depicted in this fine, smart, evocative novel by Michael Staton. Told through Bill’s experiences as a Confederate soldier in North Carolina, Blessed Shadows Dark and Deep offers a broad and deep understanding of the way that war reshaped the lives and ideas of its participants.
While Staton spins intense, exciting battle scenes at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, he also wonderfully captures all the dead time in between, whether it be ugly marches across icy scree or those awful moments of constant waiting. Those moments are filled with clever lively dialogue from both Bill’s friends like Charlie and O’Rourke and historical icons like Robert E. Lee, A.P. Hill, and the legendary spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow. Besides his time as a soldier and later a recruiter, Bill serves as a nurse giving witness to the brutal aftermath of these battles, including the amputations. Yet balanced with these rough scenes are tender ones, like Bill’s reading poetry to the dying General Gregg.
Blessed Shadows Dark and Deep possesses greater layers of depth and gravity than most historical war novels. Bill is cursed with a particular sense of impending doom even beyond his fellow soldiers since he sees halos (aureoles) flaring around individuals as a presage to death. This ability leads Staton through Bill’s ruminations toward deeper philosopher questions about fate and the role of destiny. Furthermore, Bill and his family spend a great deal of time discussing the problems of slavery – on a macro level with the overall political and military outlook and on a micro level with the family’s slaves Malinda and Wilson. Despite knowing they want to free Malinda and Wilson, the family members have real world fears that the slaves will be killed upon liberation and that their home and business will be burned to the ground by hard-core confederates.
Staton manages to ground the novel in these strong historical and intellectual foundations, yet still offer a fun and exciting read. Bill’s blossoming romances with both Becky and Frannie pop with clever dialogue. In fact, Staton has populated his novel with many smart and witty women, who serve as a civilizing counterweight to the rash and amusing young soldiers.
Blessed Shadows Dark and Deep satisfies right down to Bill’s final, daring, heroic act and delivers on romantic possibilities presented over the course of the novel. That ending hints to a sequel, which would be most welcome, since the novel is quite compelling and Staton has a tremendous grasp of the Civil War period and the lives of those who negotiated it.
Encountering danger, romance, heartache and tragedy, Catherine Merit strives to fit into a world filled with prejudice, hatred and violence where she is forced to kill a man in order to save herself. Third book of the Indignities Series.
Based on the memoirs of a Pearl Harbor survivor. Letters from two pen pals take the reader on a journey into the past, a past where nightmares came true, and when hatred reigned.
