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Table of Contents
About The Book
In 1861, Henry and Katie have found love on the rugged Maine coast. He builds boats. She wants to teach school whenever her family duties relent. Their hearts are light and the future looks bright. Then America explodes in civil war.
At first surprised by Katie’s anti-slavery feelings, then persuaded, Henry enlists in the 20th Maine Infantry, fated to become a legendary regiment in the Union Army. Staggering through a dozen brutal battles, including the desperate defense of Little Round Top at Gettysburg, he rises to sergeant. Katie, working on short-term teaching contracts, organizes neighbor women to make warm items for Maine’s men in uniform. Quiet letters between Henry in army camps and Katie at home strengthen their love. Finally receiving a brief furlough, he hurries home for a rushed wedding and precious hours as man and wife.
But history’s grip is fierce.
A ghastly battlefield wound ends Henry’s war. Katie nurses him through a long recuperation, but they cannot agree—should they return to Maine or join America’s mad flight westward? Ultimately transplanted to booming Chicago, little goes right for them in that overnight metropolis, which will test their strength and commitment as never before.
Product Details
- Publisher: Knox Press (April 4, 2023)
- Length: 336 pages
- ISBN13: 9798888451533
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Raves and Reviews
“An intimate, sweeping portrait of a country and couple divided, David O. Stewart’s The Burning Land does what all good historical fiction should do: gives us characters to root for and brings the past so vividly to life it feels like the present. I can’t wait to see how the rest of the trilogy unfolds.”
– Louis Bayard, author of Courting Mr. Lincoln and The Pale Blue Eye
“The Burning Land is an elegantly written, heartrending evocation of a Maine family's suffering during the Civil War and its aftermath. The battle scenes are riveting, the characters convincingly and compellingly developed. As a Civil War historian, I highly recommend David O. Stewart's marvelous novel.”
– Peter Cozzens, author of The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West
“David O. Stewart has written many books, but this may be his best: a gripping Civil War novel, set in coastal Maine and with the famous Twentieth Maine Regiment, followed by an exciting account of post-war Chicago. This is a book you won't want to miss.”
– Walter Stahr, author of bestselling biographies of William Seward, Edwin Stanton, and Salmon P. Chase
“In The Burning Land, David O. Stewart has vividly brought alive the landscapes and human spirit of Civil War era America from the hardscrabble coast of Maine, through the battlefields of Virginia and Pennsylvania, to the chaotic postwar scramble to survive in the burgeoning city of Chicago. To the generational drama of the tenacious Overstreet family, Mr. Stewart brings a historian's feel for the ways in which ordinary lives were shaped by extraordinary times, enriched by an unerring eye for authentic detail and page-turning prose.”
– Fergus Bordewich, author of Congress At War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied LIncoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America
“From a ground-level view, David O. Stewart chronicles the joys, heartbreaks, triumphs, struggles, perseverance, and downright grittiness of the American people through the tragedy of the American Civil War and the nation’s rebuilding. The characters shine through as though they were real and like my favorite characters, quickly felt like friends and acquaintances. Mr. Stewart’s writing transported me to the quaint villages of Maine, the battlefields of Virginia, and growing cities of a nation trying to rediscover itself after the transformational events of the Civil War. I would highly recommend The Burning Land to anyone interested in the American story and the people who created it.”
– Allen R. Thompson, author of In the Shadow of the Round Tops: Longstreet’s Countermarch, Johnston’s Reconnaissance, and the Enduring Battles for the Memory of July 2, 1863
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- Book Cover Image (jpg): The Burning Land Trade Paperback 9798888451533