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The Confederate
When the American Civil War ended Confederate officer Robert Ambrose left his fellow soldiers to return to the girl who had haunted his thoughts and dreams for the entirety of the war, but upon arriving home he learned that not only was the cause wrong, so was everything he had hoped to return to. The girl he was to marry was now promised to another, and his former mentor had cheated him. Disillusioned he left his home in River Falls, Georgia for something different: The Colorado Territory of the American West.
Ambrose soon learned that the West was wild and untamed, and despite his effort to find peace and to create a normal and stable world, something continued to pull him toward death and ruin. While the former Confederate soldier made his way through the treacherous territory of Colorado the girl he thought had been lost to him chose to follow him to the West while facing hazards of her own. While they fight to survive and to find meaning in a dangerous and new place they both learn about themselves while always thinking of the other. But will they find each other in an unfamiliar world that is as inhospitable to love as it is to law and order?
Ambrose soon learned that the West was wild and untamed, and despite his effort to find peace and to create a normal and stable world, something continued to pull him toward death and ruin. While the former Confederate soldier made his way through the treacherous territory of Colorado the girl he thought had been lost to him chose to follow him to the West while facing hazards of her own. While they fight to survive and to find meaning in a dangerous and new place they both learn about themselves while always thinking of the other. But will they find each other in an unfamiliar world that is as inhospitable to love as it is to law and order?
195 pages, Paperback
Published December 7, 2018
108 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
Scott Thompson
8 books276 followersLost in '96 is now available.
Georgia Author of the Year nominee, for first novel, Scott Thompson was born and raised in the American South where his stories take place. His debut novel, Young Men Shall See, is a coming of age story set in the 1980s in a time of quiet social change and examines the generation in the South after the Civil Rights Era. Eight Days, released 2016 takes place in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and involves a man who has died, but first must face his regrets and mistakes before finding eternity.
Thompson lives in the Carolina Low Country with his family. He is the winner of the Great American Novel contest in literature for 2010.
"Scott Thompson’s Eight Days earns and deserves a place on everyone’s bookshelf. Rich in character and subject matter, it is a must read, quite possibly a game changer."
— Teri Pietila, Book Reviewer
Review of Young Men Shall See
“This book is a vivid slice of growing up Southern in a time of racial truce if not yet true peace with honor. It's a fresh, honest look at that life in the 80s.”
— Richard Monaco, Two Time Pulitzer nominated author of the Parsival books
Georgia Author of the Year nominee, for first novel, Scott Thompson was born and raised in the American South where his stories take place. His debut novel, Young Men Shall See, is a coming of age story set in the 1980s in a time of quiet social change and examines the generation in the South after the Civil Rights Era. Eight Days, released 2016 takes place in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and involves a man who has died, but first must face his regrets and mistakes before finding eternity.
Thompson lives in the Carolina Low Country with his family. He is the winner of the Great American Novel contest in literature for 2010.
"Scott Thompson’s Eight Days earns and deserves a place on everyone’s bookshelf. Rich in character and subject matter, it is a must read, quite possibly a game changer."
— Teri Pietila, Book Reviewer
Review of Young Men Shall See
“This book is a vivid slice of growing up Southern in a time of racial truce if not yet true peace with honor. It's a fresh, honest look at that life in the 80s.”
— Richard Monaco, Two Time Pulitzer nominated author of the Parsival books
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 15, 2021
I read this for Romance Across the Ages. It is a combo of the end of Civil War, Western and a tad bit of a love story. Not my usual type of book so I am grading it very liberally and giving it 4*. The story kept my interest but does remind me of a TV western. Very few surprises and a hea.
September 7, 2019
Enjoyable fun read! Excellent description that really puts the reader right in the setting. This is not my typical genre, but Thompson really brought me into the story and made me care about Ambrose and his journey home.
January 25, 2019
The Confederate is an impressive Western that hearkens back to the early dime novels of the 1890's by writers such as Ned Buntline and Prentiss Ingraham and the early twentieth century pulp Westerns of Zane Grey. Indeed the writing style itself is very close to Grey's, short, simple sentences that appeal to any reading level, but like Grey's work, this simplicity masks deceptively modern themes. While the writing may feel anachronistically simple and plain for a modern audience, Thompson skillfully weaves in a surprisingly modern viewpoint.
The story tells of ex-Confederate officer Robert Ambrose, who returns home from the Civil War disillusioned as to the War's legitimacy and the nobility of its cause to find his fiancee engaged to another man and his former life in shambles. Turning his back on the past, Ambrose heads to the Colorado territory to forge a new life in the untamed West. Throughout his journey, Ambrose comes to question not only his own morality, but the blind assumptions that led him to take up arms against his fellow Americans.
In Ambrose, Thompson gives us a new kind of Confederate hero: not the cryptoracist veteran who bemoans the tragedy of the South's "Lost Cause," but a man who, while proud of the service he gave his homeland, finds himself questioning the political underpinnings that made such service necessary. Ambrose shows us a man who learns to accept others on the basis of their actions rather than the color of their skin. In fact, Thompson's treatment of race is one of the aspects of the novel I like the most: Unlike the traditional Westerns Thompson emulates, we are not given a portrait of white culture "taming" the savages and building a civilization, nor are we given, as in many revisionist Westerns of the 1960's and 1970's, a representation of ethnic minorities as pure and noble savages that teach the barbaric white man to appreciate nature and rise above his prejudices. Instead, Thompson populates his town of Argentine, Colorado, with a diverse cast of characters whose morality has nothing to do with race.
Another aspect I really enjoyed was the pacing of both Ambrose's primary plot and the subplot of Narcissa, Ambrose's lost love, and her journey to the West in search of him. Not only does Thompson pace it so well that when the paths inevitably cross, it makes perfect sense, but each step of Narcissa's personal journey parallels a similar step made by Ambrose in his. Finally, I enjoyed that Thompson undermines traditional Westerns by not making it necessary for Narcissa to be saved by Ambrose while he also undermines revisionist Western tropes by making it unnecessary for Narcissa to rescue Ambrose either. Both plots, while necessarily intertwined, allow their respective protagonists to solve their own dilemmas on their own, making for stronger characters overall.
In short, do not be deceived by Thompson's simple stylistic choices. The Confederate is a far more complex story than it appears, and much more intriguing. I could not put it down. If Zane Grey wrote Larry McMurtry's reinterpretation of Forrest Carter's The Outlaw Josey Wales, it might well read very much like Scott Thompson's The Confederate.
The story tells of ex-Confederate officer Robert Ambrose, who returns home from the Civil War disillusioned as to the War's legitimacy and the nobility of its cause to find his fiancee engaged to another man and his former life in shambles. Turning his back on the past, Ambrose heads to the Colorado territory to forge a new life in the untamed West. Throughout his journey, Ambrose comes to question not only his own morality, but the blind assumptions that led him to take up arms against his fellow Americans.
In Ambrose, Thompson gives us a new kind of Confederate hero: not the cryptoracist veteran who bemoans the tragedy of the South's "Lost Cause," but a man who, while proud of the service he gave his homeland, finds himself questioning the political underpinnings that made such service necessary. Ambrose shows us a man who learns to accept others on the basis of their actions rather than the color of their skin. In fact, Thompson's treatment of race is one of the aspects of the novel I like the most: Unlike the traditional Westerns Thompson emulates, we are not given a portrait of white culture "taming" the savages and building a civilization, nor are we given, as in many revisionist Westerns of the 1960's and 1970's, a representation of ethnic minorities as pure and noble savages that teach the barbaric white man to appreciate nature and rise above his prejudices. Instead, Thompson populates his town of Argentine, Colorado, with a diverse cast of characters whose morality has nothing to do with race.
Another aspect I really enjoyed was the pacing of both Ambrose's primary plot and the subplot of Narcissa, Ambrose's lost love, and her journey to the West in search of him. Not only does Thompson pace it so well that when the paths inevitably cross, it makes perfect sense, but each step of Narcissa's personal journey parallels a similar step made by Ambrose in his. Finally, I enjoyed that Thompson undermines traditional Westerns by not making it necessary for Narcissa to be saved by Ambrose while he also undermines revisionist Western tropes by making it unnecessary for Narcissa to rescue Ambrose either. Both plots, while necessarily intertwined, allow their respective protagonists to solve their own dilemmas on their own, making for stronger characters overall.
In short, do not be deceived by Thompson's simple stylistic choices. The Confederate is a far more complex story than it appears, and much more intriguing. I could not put it down. If Zane Grey wrote Larry McMurtry's reinterpretation of Forrest Carter's The Outlaw Josey Wales, it might well read very much like Scott Thompson's The Confederate.
February 10, 2020
great book great new author. well written from first page to last. I would like to see Scott make A series of it highly recommend it to all my western reading friends. Paw Paw Steve Stevens
July 11, 2021
Sophomoric
The story line was week and after three quarters of the way through I couldn’t continue. The focus seemed to be on the main characters hat, which he wore through his time in the confederate army and even though long after his discharge and now a civilian he was continually referred to as a ranger. His former fiancé decides to find him and has immediate success after arriving in Denver by serendipitously locating his name in a hotel registry. Week, unrealistic and quite frankly not worth your time.
The story line was week and after three quarters of the way through I couldn’t continue. The focus seemed to be on the main characters hat, which he wore through his time in the confederate army and even though long after his discharge and now a civilian he was continually referred to as a ranger. His former fiancé decides to find him and has immediate success after arriving in Denver by serendipitously locating his name in a hotel registry. Week, unrealistic and quite frankly not worth your time.
January 27, 2019
Great read for those who like to see what the writer sees.
Great characters, loved Robert Ambrose and his quest to find himself after surviving the Civil War as one of the famous Mosby's Raiders. This book describes a true southern gentleman, who questions his role and the real truth of why there was a civil war between the states. I loved the book the characters and his abilities to describe a setting so as to be able to see what the writer sees..
Great characters, loved Robert Ambrose and his quest to find himself after surviving the Civil War as one of the famous Mosby's Raiders. This book describes a true southern gentleman, who questions his role and the real truth of why there was a civil war between the states. I loved the book the characters and his abilities to describe a setting so as to be able to see what the writer sees..
February 6, 2021
This was a great story. The timing and the fact that they could find one another again in the vastness of the west, although improbable, was handled very well. This was a swift read and I enjoyed it a lot.
Here is my favorite quote:
“Sometimes the good of a father does not become the good of the son. I don’t know why this is. I have seen it in my people and the white people. It’s rare, but it happens.”
Here is my favorite quote:
“Sometimes the good of a father does not become the good of the son. I don’t know why this is. I have seen it in my people and the white people. It’s rare, but it happens.”
March 3, 2019
An ST. Civil War/Going West Novel
ST. has. penned a western story thAt begins as the Civil War closes to an end. One young Man from Georgia and an ex Mosby's Ranger heads for home. She. He arrives he finds that everything has changed and heads West for his new adventure. This is an excellent read for the genre.....DEHS
ST. has. penned a western story thAt begins as the Civil War closes to an end. One young Man from Georgia and an ex Mosby's Ranger heads for home. She. He arrives he finds that everything has changed and heads West for his new adventure. This is an excellent read for the genre.....DEHS
January 6, 2021
He reminds me Louis L'Amour.
I like the way the author writes. He reminds me of the way Louis LAmour writes. He writes like a gentlemen, not sleazy. It seems like he was there and knows the territory and the way they talked and the way they handled themselves. I highly recommend this author.
I like the way the author writes. He reminds me of the way Louis LAmour writes. He writes like a gentlemen, not sleazy. It seems like he was there and knows the territory and the way they talked and the way they handled themselves. I highly recommend this author.
January 14, 2019
Hellova good tale!
Confederate soldier survives the war and goes home expecting to marry his promised only to find and no longer available. Heads to Colorado for a new life and finds adventure. Very well written book.
Confederate soldier survives the war and goes home expecting to marry his promised only to find and no longer available. Heads to Colorado for a new life and finds adventure. Very well written book.
February 17, 2020
I enjoyed the tale, writing style was similar to Louis L’Amour’s which is great for me. I was a little distracted by some misspellings, e.g. “sited” for “sighted” his gun and the heroine pulling her knife out of its “sheaf” but all in all readers of westerns will like this book.
February 2, 2019
Good western
Really enjoyed the book. My first book by this author. Will be reading more by this author especially the Ambrose saga.
Really enjoyed the book. My first book by this author. Will be reading more by this author especially the Ambrose saga.
February 20, 2019
Cute
Cute little book. I enjoyed something quick to read and enjoyed the description of the mountains. Since I have been through there it made me see them again,
Cute little book. I enjoyed something quick to read and enjoyed the description of the mountains. Since I have been through there it made me see them again,
April 29, 2019
A Story
The story was ok. It cold of used more description of the background. The relationship of the characters worked ok.
The story was ok. It cold of used more description of the background. The relationship of the characters worked ok.
November 17, 2020
Good book
Read all of them are going to be in order. Storyline continues to grow and develop. Characters are realistic and get better and better.
Read all of them are going to be in order. Storyline continues to grow and develop. Characters are realistic and get better and better.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews