This book is supposedly about the Battle of Gettysburg, but it could have been about any battle in the Civil War. What you get is a chronicle of gritty front-line impressions from three friends: brothers Luke (age 18) and Thomas (age 16) Chandler, and Elisha Smith (age 18) – all from Martha’s Vineyard, and all serving in The Twentieth Massachusetts, Company I. While the boys are abolitionists, most of their comrades are not, and readers get an earful of racism and downright cruelty about blacks expressed by other soldiers.

The book avoids the broad brush of strategy and tactics that most Civil War novels employ, but rather, sticks very close to the details. You’ll read about lice on the soldiers’ bodies and worms in their food; problems with diarrhea and sunburn and heat stroke and hunger; reports of endless hours spent in boredom; endless talk about sex in the crudest of terms. When the battle starts, you get a sense of the dirt and smoke and heat and thirst and smell of blood and of decaying bodies; the fear and fatigue and courage and death and destruction; and the sorrow in the aftermath of a fight.

The story goes back and forth between space and time, beginning with the boys living at home with their physician father and a Cape Verdean woman, Rose Miranda, who has helped take care of the boys since their mother’s untimely death.

Sometimes, there is a third narrative thread – a sort of historian’s perspective of the situation in Gettysburg. This thread appears from time to time in italics, but since other threads also appear from time to time in italics, it can be a bit confusing. There are also a few love stories that appear from time to time.

Evaluation: It is difficult for me not to like a book about the Civil War, but this book didn’t do much for me. I liked the emphasis on what soldiering is “really” like with all the attention to detail. The ground-eye view of Pickett's Charge is very affecting. But overall, I wasn’t all that impressed with the writing, and never felt close to the majority of the characters. It might be the fault of the chronological jumping around, but I think it was mainly the prosaic prose . The characters just didn’t come to life for me. ( )

The premise was promising--two abolitionist brothers from Martha's Vineyard join the Union army and see their first battle at Gettysburg. However, Hough intersperses the story of the brothers with another story, using italicized text to indicate that it's a different narrative thread. I hate that! Tell a single story or clearly connect the two...and don't use italicized text. It's hard to read and frankly annoying!

As a history bluff, I diligently plowed my way through the tale, only to discover that I really didn't want to finish it. After all, I know how the Battle of Gettysburg ends. So I flipped ahead to see if the brothers survive and how their narrative ends. Don't think I missed much in between ( )