Good Time Coming: A sweeping saga set during the American Civil War - Hardcover

Harris, C.S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0727886495 ISBN 13: 9780727886491

Publisher: Severn House, 2016

Synopsis

A powerful tale of the survival of the women and children left behind during the American Civil War by the author of the Sebastian St Cyr mysteries.

It's the beginning of the American Civil War and the Union army is sailing down the Mississippi, leaving death and destruction in its wake.

The graceful river town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, has known little of the hardships, death, and destruction of the War. But with the fall of New Orleans, all changes. A Federal fleet appears on the Mississippi, and it isn't long before the depredations and attacks begin.

For one Southern family the dark blue uniform of the Union army is not the only thing they fear. A young girl stops a vicious attack on her mother and the town must pull together to keep each other safe. But a cryptic message casts doubt amongst the town's folk. Is there a traitor in the town and can anybody be trusted?
Twelve-year-old Amrie and her family have never felt entirely accepted by their neighbors, due to their vocal abolitionist beliefs. But when Federal forces lay siege to the nearby strongholds of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, the women and children of St. Francisville find themselves living in a no man's land between two warring armies. Realizing they must overcome their differences and work together to survive, they soon discover strengths and abilities they never knew they possessed, and forge unexpected friendships.

As the violence in the area intensifies, Amrie comes to terms with her own capacity for violence and realizes that the capacity for evil exists within all of us. And when the discovery of a closely guarded secret brings the wrath of the Federal army down on St. Francisville, the women of St. Francisville, with whom Amrie and her mother have shared the war years' many deprivations and traumas, now unite and risk their own lives to save them.
This isn't Gone With the Wind; it isn't glamorous but it is raw and tugs at the heartstrings in the same way. Do we finally have a rival to Margaret Mitchell?

About this title

About the Author

C.S. Harris graduated with a degree in Classics before earning a Ph.D. in European history. A scholar of the French Revolution and 19th-century Europe, she has lived in Europe and various far-flung parts of the old British Empire. She now lives in New Orleans with her husband and two daughters.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I killed a man the summer I turned thirteen. Sometimes I still see him in my dreams, his eyes as blue as the Gulf on a clear spring morning, his cheeks reddened by the hot Louisiana sun. His face is always the same, ever young and vital. But the bones of his hands are bare and stained dark by the fetid mud of the swamps, and his scent is that of death.
Yet even worse are the nights when I lie awake, when a hot summer wind shifts the festoons of Spanish moss hanging from the arching branches of the live oaks down by the bayou and whispers through the canebrakes in a sibilant rush. That’s when the fear comes to me, cold and soul-shrivelling, and I find myself listening lest the hushed breath of the dead betray the secret of what we did that day.
I tell myself his mouth is filled with earth, his tongue turned to dust. But the dead don’t need to speak to bear witness to the wrongs done them. And though I tell myself the wrongs were his, and that no just God could condemn my actions on that fateful morning, it is a desperate reassurance that brings no real rest. If this war has taught us anything, it is that convictions of righteous certitude can be soul-corrupting illusions that offer no dispensation from hell.

Edition details

• Publisher: Severn House
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0727886495
• ISBN 13: 9780727886491
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320