First published 1995
James Newton leaves his one-room schoolhouse in Wisconsin to join the Fourteenth Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry in 1861. At eighteen, this farm boy turned private carries his pen alongside his rifle, writing letters home by firelight after long marches and brutal battles. Newton fights at Shiloh, where bodies pile like cordwood. He endures the siege at Vicksburg, watching men starve and die of disease. The Red River campaign tests his resolve, and capture lands him in a Confederate prison where survival becomes daily struggle. Through each ordeal, Newton writes to his parents with unflinching honesty about army discipline, the brotherhood between enemies, and officers who fail their men. His humor sustains him when nothing else can. As battles reshape the nation, they also transform Newton from country teacher to seasoned lieutenant. When he casts his first vote for Lincoln, Newton realizes his pen and ballot serve his country as much as his musket ever did.
Genres: biography, american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Dixie, Vicksburg, Wisconsin
Period: 1861
206 pages · Paperback · University of Wisconsin Press