A sad, sad story about the psychological carnage of war. I didn't mean to read this book back to back with Yellow Birds (I don't suggest anyone else do it either). War definitely is hell. ( )

This novel switches around between a few separate (though adjacent) time periods: Summerfield’s life at home right before he enlists in the army, his time spent as a private before and during his first battle, and the events that occur after he is abandoned on the battlefield and ends up in a military hospital. I’ve never encountered this type of narrative arrangement before, but I loved it. McFarland’s transitions between the time periods are smooth and keep the story moving along briskly. At times, it felt like pieces of a puzzle were falling into place as small details that had seemed insignificant in one time period suddenly had more meaning in another time period. The disjointed nature of it seemed fitting for a story about PTSD—it reflects the way a PTSD sufferer’s memories might be disrupted and scattered.

McFarland’s writing is fantastic. His descriptions are concise, yet filled with carefully chosen, vivid details that bring the scenes to life in the reader’s mind. I even found myself going back to reread some passages because they were so beautifully written. The descriptions of battle and the military hospital are horrific—as they should be. The ghastly deaths and injuries Summerfield witnesses emphasize the shocking and staggering waste and brutality of war, and make his development of PTSD completely understandable and all the more heartbreaking. The portrayal of Summerfield’s PTSD—imagined injuries and pain, flashbacks, visual and auditory delusions, losing his ability to speak and write—was fascinating. I’m not a PTSD expert, but I’m interested in it and have read about it, and would recommend this book for anyone wanting an idea of what it’s like.

Summerfield has a lot of depth as a character. His love for baseball is a reminder that he’s just a normal young man who had a life (and a bright future) before the war. A constant tension arises from his “unnatural” feelings for his older sister, which caused him to enlist in the military to get away from home. His kindness and sympathy toward, and companionship with, the other soldiers endeared me to him. The always looming possibility of him being accused of desertion and executed kept me on edge.

Overall, this was a brilliant, gripping novel. I plan to read more works by this author even if they aren’t the type of stories I’d typically read—he’s that good.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )

When we use the word nostalgia these days, we generally mean a longing for past. But the term was also used to refer to severe melancholia, particularly among soldiers.

The protagonist of this Civil War novel, Summerfield Hayes, is a young, base ball playing Brooklynite who enlists in the Union Army over his sister's opposition (they have been all to each other in the few years since their parents were killed in an omnibus accident while visiting Ireland), and finds himself in the midst of the Battle of the Wilderness, during which he is wounded and left behind by his fellow soldiers. Wandering through the battlefield, he desperately seeks safety. Ultimately, he is taken to a military hospital in Washington, his injuries more psychic than physical, suffering from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. He cannot speak. When he attempts to write, his hand shakes uncontrollably. He has nightmares and visions. And just as still happens in today's military, his mental injury is seen by some of the hospital's powers-that-be as malingering. But others are on his side, including the poet, Walt Whitman, who spent much of the war visiting the wounded.

On those bones is hung a tale of love and comradeship, hope and desperation, as McFarland chillingly describes the horrors of war, made, perhaps, all the more horrific by the descriptions of the very ordinary things soldiers do to pass the time waiting for battle. He takes us back and forth in time and place, as Hayes remembers Brooklyn and his family, the battle and his fellow soldiers. The author uses a couple of stylistic devices in conjunction with one another to differentiate time and place, using the present tense when Hayes is in the present, and the past tense when he is remembering, and referring to his protagonist as "Hayes" when he is at the front and in the hospital, but "Summerfield" when he is home in Brooklyn.

I acquired this book at the American Library Association convention in Chicago; it was a publisher's freebie. I hesitated before picking it up, as I am not a Civil War buff. Didn't matter. This is a beautifully written, evocative book, and I found that I really cared about what happened to Summerfield.