Hearts Divided

by Joanne Sundell

Set in Virginia, tells the story of three children, Willa, Surrey, and Levi, who face a different future than they envisioned as the Civil War breaks out.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2010

About the author

My nine, published novels to date are with Five Star, Gale/Cengage. Number ten will be out August, 2019. What started as a pastime in my mountain writing spot turned into a realization of my dream to bring my own voice to my own fiction page in frontier history. My early novels reveal my love of historical romance, while later works uncover my bent for western spirits, in fact and fiction. The Old West (and sometimes the Arctic West of Alaska) is ever the star. I'm just here to record moments in time.

My husband and I raised our three children in the Colorado Rockies, and moved to southern California ten years ago.

My best to you, readers all,
Joanne Sundell

Memberships in WWA, WWW, RWA

Reviews

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book about the Civil War, and how it divides families, friends and loved ones. Levi is a Quaker, who is engaged to Comfort. Surry, a young black girl is friends with Willa, a white girl. Each person has separate views of the coming war. Levi, as his religouis tenets tell him, wants no part of it. Surry wants to escape to the North; Willa, after her brothers are killed in the 1st battle, runs away from home, dresses as a man and joins the Confederate Army to kill the Yankees.

This book was sort of a soap opera. Many of the characters in the book get involved with other characters. There are many hearts divided in the story. It is the first of Four books in a series of novels about the Civil War written by this author.

[Tammy Terrace · Rating 4 out of 5]

True to life, touchingly poignant, it leaves the reader aching because, as in real life so often, there are no happy endings, no satisfying solutions, only going constantly onward. It is labeled "book one" and I would hope to find there is a conclusion to this story worthy of the characters portrayed in it.

[Alice · Rating 1 out of 5]

I anticipated an interesting novel about the Civil War and got a boring pseudo-sexual book with no ending. There were so many improbable plot twists and such repetitive language that I couldn't wait until I finished the book. I kept thinking there would be some kind of resolution somewhere, but it just ended.