Two Brothers - One North, One South

 Author's Summary

Walt Whitman feared that the real war would never get in the books: the true stories that depicted the courage and humanity of soldiers who fought, bled, and died in the American Civil War. Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, along with the personages that forged them, David H. Jones's novel spans four years in the midst of America s costliest and most commemorated war. The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended. As fate has it, William's brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well. The reader is taken seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.

MWSA Review

MWSA 2008 Silver Medal for Fiction, Historical

An American family’s struggle woven onto the tapestry of one of the most bitter times in US history!

Many authors who attempt to write historical fiction have difficulty weaving their story onto the backdrop of the historical time-period they use as a setting.  Those authors could learn a lot from David H. Jones.  Taking only a few snippets of journals, memoirs, and obscure newspaper articles, Jones expertly tells the tale of a Maryland family driven apart by the Civil War.  The youngest brother takes up arms with the Confederacy, while an older brother becomes a Union officer.  Both serve with distinction, meeting on the field of battle at Petersburg. 

The main characters in the book are all historical figures, and the esteemed poet Walt Whitman is a key figure in the book, as he spends time with both brothers as they are recuperating from wounds.   The author does a masterful job of taking the historical characters and events and filling in the gaps in the historic timeline with completely believable events which only add to the rich tapestry of the story.  Civil war enthusiasts as well as those who enjoy good family drama stories will find this book hard to believe.

Reviewed by: Rob Ballister (2008)