He enters the war believing service is all he has left. He soon learns the deepest wounds are not always suffered on the battlefield.
In 1862, William Laughlin marches into the American Civil War carrying the grief of a dead wife and the belief that history is made by men at the front lines. With the 78th Ohio Infantry in Tennessee and Mississippi, he witnesses not only the brutality of combat, but the lives war consumes in its wake.
Runaway slaves risking everything for freedom.
Women serving in hidden roles, risking their lives in a war that will not remember them.
These encounters show William a truth he has only begun to grasp: the war is shaped as much by those who endure it as by those who fight it.
Through campaigns from Corinth to Atlanta, long marches, and moral crossroads, William's faith and convictions are tested as the cost of war becomes impossible to ignore.
Based on historical movements and firsthand accounts, this is a Civil War novel about duty, awakening, and the unseen lives that determine the meaning of victory.
For readers of Howard Bahr's The Black Flower and literary Civil War historical fiction.