Book's Premise:
Adam and Abby grew up together. In 1861, Adam joins the U.S. Cavalry to
fight in the American Civil War. Adam is instrumental in several major battles
but his family loses contact with him after the battle of Antietam. Now, in
1864 in the Battle of the Wilderness Adam comes back into play. He leads a
daring assault against the Confederates, in the same woods that he made his
home many years previous. The ghosts of the past, reuniting again, damned to
fight an epic battle
Prologue:
Abby walked down the well-worn path. Huge firs and
maples sprouted up from the earth. The trees were scarred, telling the story of
a bloody conflict that happened four years ago. The undergrowth was luscious,
green, and full of color. Far off in the distance, the sound of a babbling
brook broke the silence. She noted to herself that she heard the birds singing
their cheery song as they flew by her. There was a time, she thought to
herself, when she didn’t think the wildlife would ever return to this place. So
much blood and agony rippled through the land. Too much death.
She noted the subtle changes that came to these
woods. The land was slowly healing. The smells of war and death slowly lifted,
exchanged for the smell of wildflowers and the fresh scent of the trees. Grass
now covered the path that many a soldier once marched upon. The meadow in the
center of “The Wilderness” was now a sea of green, speckled with the bright
colors of wildflowers.
Memories of the horror overwhelmed her. The images
transported her to the days just after the battle. The sight was gruesome;
bodies lay maimed and broken, stacked on top of each other, littering the
ground with the dead. The memories were so real that even though it had been
four years, she shivered. She could still see the men who fell here. The
further she got into the woods, the more she smelled smoke. By the time she got
to the meadow, there wasn’t much left of the bodies. The fires raced through
here so furiously that the dying and injured couldn’t escape.
She remembered helping to bury the dead. There were
so many of them. Thousands of men already died, she thought to herself, how
many more would have to die? She remembered looking into the endless sea of
mutilated corpses. Their sightless eyes fixed on something that no longer
existed. She remembered crying for them. These men, these children, were no
older than she was. To her, it didn’t matter which side of the war they were
on. In her heart, she was a rebel, a Confederate, but these men fought
diligently for their causes no matter what they were. She now understood why
people started calling it The Boys’ War.
The memory started to fade as she walked into the
meadow. The smell of the grass and wildflowers beckoning her as if someone or
something was calling to her. A thin stream of sunlight broke through the
forest’s canopy, adding warmth and comfort to her surroundings. She sat down in
the center of the meadow. She spread her skirts around her, enjoying the
atmosphere. Before long, she laid down, using her arms as pillows.
A breeze swept through the valley causing a long
blade of grass to brush against her cheek like a finger caressing her skin. She
was surprised by the tears streaming down her face. She laid back in the grass
and shut her eyes to force the pain and the ghosts of her past to the farthest
corner of her mind.
She woke up to the cold biting into her. The sun
had long since dipped behind the tree tops, the moon now took its place in the
starry night sky. The moonlight followed the same path the sunlight followed
earlier that day. It forced the painful memories back to the forefront of her
mind. She closed her eyes again and dreamed.
No comments:
Post a Comment