The tale begins with a young woman of Virginia, keeping house for her father while her brother is away fighting for the South. Circumstances bring Northerner Frank Kearny across her path--a man who once attended college with her brother and who may have it in his power to bring heartache and ruin, however unwittingly, on their family. At danger both from Northerners and neighbors, Lucy Armistead must do everything she can to survive the war.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Charles King was a United States soldier and a distinguished writer. He graduated from West Point in 1866 and served in the Army during the Indian Wars under George Crook. He was wounded in the arm forcing his retirement from the regular army. During this time he became acquainted with Buffalo Bill Cody. King would later write scripts for several of Cody's silents films. In 1898, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and sailed to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War; he also led a brigade during the ensuing Philippine-American War. He returned to the United States and was active in the Wisconsin National Guard and in training troops for World War I. He wrote and edited over 60 books and novels.
I really enjoyed this book. It's balanced; the hero is Northern and the heroine Southern. King was a West Point graduate who supported the North, but who had a respect for the tactics and character of the Southern generals as well. I don't feel like I'm being pushed to sympathize with one character's views over another's. I loved the characterization; the story held me to the very end . It's very interesting, with plenty of unexpected twists.
Civil War romance with a couple of battle scenes and a legal drama thrown in to boot.
Frank Kearny is a Union scout who falls for Lucy Armistead, a Confederate sympathiser holed up with her elderly father in their Virginia farmhouse above Bull Run. He picks up an injury and she nurses hi to health, not the first time I've come across that device in order to bring together a pair of lovers across the divide of North and South.
Of those battles, King expertly recreated the first manouevers of the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was a soldier himself with seventy years of active military service, the only man in American history to serve in five wars, from the Civil War to World War I. The action here climaxed with Gettysburg and a rousing account of Stuart's calvary charge.
As with the other small handful of books I had read by King before, the writing was fine if a little flat, the character's sense of honour pleasing if a little unlikely, and the story was a little on the thin side.