Excerpt from upcoming Civil War novel

Lackawanna is the word that the native peoples use to describe where two rivers meet.  About a hundred miles to the north and east of the camp at the natural bridge, the mighty Rappahannock meets the Rapidan.  And there, a Brigade of three hundred gathered under the starlight in a place called Hartwood Church, preparing for a long march northward.
In this army, the Army of the Potomac, one would notice many more dark faces than would be found at the camp near the James River.  There were a great many Negroes fighting for the Union--and honorably so.  Some were born into freedom, and others had been slaves--and yet others were slaves who absconded from the south.  Wherever they came from, the Union Army welcomed them.
They were one with their white northern brothers, fighting alongside and for the same cause.  All prayed to the same God as they marched in to battle.  And still, around the individual campfires at night, white and brown stayed separate.  
Funny, because if you were a fly sittin’ on the shoulder of any of those men, at any of those fires, you would hear the same hopes, and the same longings, and the same fears.  War had a way of making everyone the same.  And it whittled away at the unimportant.  Any soldier--most anyway--found himself wishing for the simplest pleasures:  to hold his child again, to feel the soft embrace of his woman again, to not have it occur to him that this night might be his last.
Oh God in heaven,  how I would appreciate these things if You would give them back to me.  How many men had offered this prayer in time of war?  Countless.  Countless.



An Excerpt from my upcoming novel, not officially named.  Look for it in paperback and ebook in early 2013.