About The Book
Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, along with the personages that forged them, David H. Jones’s novel spans four years in the midst of America’s costliest and most commemorated war.
The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended. As fate has it, William’s brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well.
The reader is taken seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.
Dear Mr. Jones,
Thank you for your heads-up to Schoharie Chapter of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, to whom you sent your informational e-mail.
I am a member of Schoharie Chapter, my union ancestor being Rev. Lt. Jonathan Rawlings, who was wounded at the battle of Parker’s Crossroads, Tennesee.
Therefore I unfortunately have no connection to the battle of Petersburg. My only knowledge of that battle other than reading is from the movie “Cold Mountain” which depicted the Crater as quite horrific.
In any event, I shall try and get my hands on a copy of your book as soon as practicable.
Please enjoy your summer.
Sincerely,
Albert Gustafson