by Harold Keith
First published 2004
Jeff Bussey strides up the wagon road to Fort Leavenworth in 1861, eager to enlist with Union volunteers. The young Kansan wants to fight the Cherokee leader Stand Watie, whose rebel raids terrorize the territory south of Kansas. Jeff gets his wish and more. He marches through Oklahoma's heat and mud, always hungry and exhausted. Watie's men destroy cornfields and gut homes across the frontier. Jeff forages for food to survive and learns what battle truly costs. He befriends Noah Babbitt, a printer who once walked from Topeka to Galveston just to see magnolias bloom, and young Jimmy Lear, who dies too soon at Cane Hill. He also meets Lucy Washbourne, a beautiful Confederate sympathizer. But Jeff makes a dangerous enemy in Captain Clardy, a cruel officer harboring dark secrets. Through circumstances that make him perhaps the only Western soldier to witness the Civil War from both Union and Confederate sides, Jeff discovers that survival depends on understanding your enemies as well as your friends.
Genres: american-civil-war, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, 19th-century
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Fort Leavenworth, Oklahoma, Kansas, Topeka, Galveston, Cane Hill
Period: 1861
536 pages · Library Binding · Thorndike Press