The Confederate

Casca #27

by Tony Roberts

Retreating from the corpse-strewn battle ground of Sharpsburg, Casca and his comrades have to fight for survival against growing odds. From the frozen killing slopes of Fredericksburg to the suicidal charge up Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, Casca has to use his martial skills learned throughout the centuries to keep his team together.

But nothing faced on the battlefield can compare to the implacable hatred of the Brotherhood of the Lamb and their agent’s efforts to capture him and kill those that he loves. So Casca leads the survivors of his shrinking band out from being trapped behind enemy lines to the final showdown with the Brotherhood where at a Virginia farmhouse no quarter will be given and only one side will emerge alive, and where Casca will finally fight for vengeance and for the sanity of a woman he once loved.

250 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 2, 2014

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Reviews

[Daniel Carey]

One thing Roberts has done with this retelling of the American Civil War which includes Casca, is reveal the humanity of the common soldier and justice of the Confederate cause which I find admirable.

Shelby Foote painted the most stunning and completely accurate account of the Civil War I've ever read. While his account (which no author with the exception of Michael & Jeff Shaara) could possibly rival is breathtaking in its account and epic in its scope, he still wrote as a historian. The events take front seat while the opinions, perspectives and musings of a common individual were only of minor account.

While Roberts is certainly no Foote or Shaara, he does question the motives of both sides of the conflict and shows that the Federal Government under Lincoln needed to suspend personal liberty for all people in the midst of war and suppress the constitutional right of state representation in order to preserve the Union. Roberts shows the southern outrage of this action in the midst of the fight scenes. A wonderful moment in the book for me was when the doubts and misgivings of the Southern cause were voiced by Billy to Casca. Are they evil? Do they really support slavery by fighting for the institution of slavery although they own no slaves? Casca says that while slavery is wrong, he was fighting to defend the community and people of Virginia that he had come to care for and the rights that were being threatened for those citizens as Americans.

I think the author put biased 21st century ideas into text but the modern reader can certainly appreciate this moment of reflection on the motivations that inspired the Southern Cause.

As for the story, it jumps forward from 1862 with the battle of Antietam until 1865 with Appomattox Court House. Casca is pursued by the Brotherhood of the Lamb and continues to fight for a dying cause as he recalls these memories to Dr. Goldman in the early 21st century.

The story certainly kept my interest and I enjoyed many moments. What I can't forgive however, and what brings this story down to 3 stars are the list of grammatical mistakes I found throughout the book. There were at least 10-15 times I found the singular form of "Yankee" used with the proposition incorrectly or the determiner omitted (the Yankee are coming, when will Yankee get here?)

I don't know if Roberts was responsible or the person who converted the book from paperback to ebook is to blame, but at times the context read like a 5th or 6th grader wrote sections.

I can forgive these stupid mistakes. I am determined to finish the series someday. But this does tend to pull me out of the story and that is never a good sign.

[Jeff Feltman]

Great comeback from the last writer