First published 1957
Union soldiers crowd into the wooden stockade at Andersonville, Georgia, where survival means more than avoiding Confederate guards. Inside the prison walls, 50,000 Northern troops face starvation, disease, and brutal fellow prisoners who prey on the weak. The camp commandant shows no mercy while 14,000 men die around makeshift shelters. Outside the barricades, a local planter and his daughter witness the daily horror but can do little to help. Some prisoners band together to protect each other from the cutthroats and raiders who steal food and clothing from dying men. Others retreat into themselves, clinging to memories of home. The war rages beyond the prison, but inside Andersonville, men fight a different battle against despair, cruelty, and their own capacity for both good and evil. MacKinlay Kantor spent twenty five years researching this story, creating a portrait of how ordinary people respond when pushed to their limits.
Genres: american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: gritty, human-nature
Setting: Andersonville, Georgia
Period: Civil War
Mass Market Paperback · Signet
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, torture