Nostalgia

A Novel

By: Dennis McFarland

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

From best-selling author Dennis McFarland comes an extraordinary Civil War novel: the journey of a nineteen-year-old private abandoned by his comrades in the Wilderness, struggling to regain his voice, his identity, and his place in a world - all utterly changed by what he has experienced on the battlefield.

In the winter of 1864, young Summerfield Hayes, a pitcher for the famous Eckford Club, enlists in the Union army, leaving his sister, a schoolteacher, devastated and alone in their Brooklyn home. The siblings, who have recently lost both their parents, are unusually attached and Summerfield fears his untoward, secret feelings for his sister. This rich backstory is intercut with stunning scenes of Hayes' soul-altering hours on the march, at the front - the slaughter of barely grown young men who, only days before, whooped it up with him in a regimental ball game; his temporary deafness and disorientation after a shell blast; his fevered attempt to find safe haven after he has been deserted by his own comrades. And later, in the Washington military hospital where he eventually finds himself, now mute and unable even to write his name. In this twilit realm, among the people he encounters - a compassionate drug-addicted amputee, the ward matron who only appears to be his enemy, the captain who is convinced that Hayes is faking his illness - is a gray-bearded eccentric who visits the ward daily and becomes his strongest advocate: Walt Whitman. This timeless story, whose outcome hinges on the fellowship that is forged in crisis, reminds us how deep the wounds of war are, not all of which are visible.

©2013 Dennis McFarland (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Classic Civil War Novel

It's amazing to me that this powerful, moving novel is so little known. I was mesmerized by the writing, the characters and the story. It's a harrowing, hellish account of the horrors of war and how they affect not only the young man involved, but all the people who come in contact with him. The Killer Angels, The Black Flower, Cain at Gettysburg -- this novel belongs on the same shelf as these much better-known classic Civil War books. This is one of the best novels I've ever read, let alone the best Civil War novel. Anybody interested in the Civil War, life in the Civil War era, and the effects of war on the mind and emotions in an era that only vaguely understood the symptoms and possible treatment should read this book. Sean Runnette narrates this story perfectly. I can't recommend it enough.