Dramatically compelling and historically informed, the stories in acclaimed author Pat Carr's latest collection, The Death of a Confederate Colonel, take us into the lives of those left behind during the Civil War. These stories, all with Arkansas settings, are filled with the trauma of the killing, the dying, and the horrendous wounds of the war. They tell of a Confederate woman's care of and growing affection for a wounded Union soldier, a plantation mistress' singular love for a sick slave child, and an eight-year-old girl's fight for survival against frigid cold, injury, starvation, heartbreak, and lawlessness. Here are women showing what they're made of as they hold down the home front with heroism and loyalty, or, sometimes, with weakness and duplicity. Will a young woman remain loyal to her betrothed when he returns from the war maimed? How long can a caring nurse hold her finger on a severed artery and keep a soldier alive? And how does anyone comprehend the legacy of slavery and the brutality of war? The Death of a Confederate Colonel triumphs in its portrayal of desperate circumstances coated in the patina of the Civil War era, the complexity of ordinary people confronting situations that change them forever.
