Tag Archives: Civil War

Richard H. Triebe. On a Rising Tide. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse, 2006.

By June 1864, Wilmington was the only open Confederate port on the eastern seaboard.  Cargo brought into the port allowed the Confederacy to fight on.  Blockade running and Sherman’s March to the Sea changed Wilmington, bringing to the city thousands of desperate refugees, wheeler-dealers, and dangerous men.  This novel contains good scenes of the blockade runner Atlantis negotiating the waters at Cape Fear, eluding Union ships, and loading up in Nassau, but the heart of the story is what happens in Wilmington.  It is a book of adventure, war, and romance, with scenes of betrayal and violence.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Brunswick, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Triebe, Richard H.

Edith Edwards. The Ghosts of Turtle Nest. New York: iUniverse, 2007.

Connie Edmonds has built a successful real estate business in Southport, but she is haunted by the past.  She didn’t intervene to prevent a sergeant from bullying a fellow WAC into despair and suicide.  The dead girl’s father, a United States senator, holds Connie responsible and has harassed her for decades. Connie’s friend Lucy has wrestled with guilt about the suicide, and Connie’s new love, the local Episcopal priest, has his demons too. When Connie has an opportunity to turn the tables on Senator Roberts, she must decide whether that is the path she should take.  Her Christian faith and a message from a Civil War era ghost figure in her thinking.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Comments Off on Edith Edwards. The Ghosts of Turtle Nest. New York: iUniverse, 2007.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Brunswick, Coast, Edwards, Edith, Religious/Inspirational

Waldron Baily. The Homeward Trail. New York: W. J. Watt & Co., 1916.

David Simmons and Ruth Swaim were childhood playmates, growing up on adjacent farms by the Yadkin River. Their parents assumed that the young people would some day wed, but when David bungles a sale of Mr. Swaim’s apples, he leaves the area. David’s plan is to earn the money to repay Mr. Swaim. Thus begin a picaresque tale in which David encounters an escaped Union prisoner and an Indian princess. David enjoys his time among the Croatan Indians (Lumbees) and comes to love the Princess Elizabeth. That in itself is a complicated situation, but the plot thickens when the Union soldier turns up where Ruth is staying and tells her about David’s new love. Ruth goes to David, and overhears David confess to Elizabeth his prior relationship with Ruth. Ruth and David recognize that their future is together, but leaving the Croatan settlement proves difficult.

Check this title’s availability and access an online copy through the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

Comments Off on Waldron Baily. The Homeward Trail. New York: W. J. Watt & Co., 1916.

Filed under 1910-1919, 1916, Baily, Waldron, Novels to Read Online, Piedmont

Bob Zeller and John Beshears. Jacob’s Run. Wilmington, N.C.: Whittler’s Bench Press, 2007.

It’s 1860 and Coleman Blue is a reporter for the Wilmington Standard. He’s comfortable in his hometown and doesn’t give much thought to the slave trade that is responsible for a significant part of its prosperity. That changes when he’s questioned by Ira Spears, an agent from Philadelphia who’s come to town to investigate the deaths of slaves insured by his company. Since those slaves were owned by two men whom Blue has long suspected of corruption, the newspaperman leaps into an investigation that upends his worldview and imperils his life.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Beshears, John, Coast, Historical, Mystery, New Hanover, Zeller, Bob

Charles Frazier. Thirteen Moons. New York: Random House, 2006.

Loosely based on the life of frontiersman William Holland Thomas, narrator Will Cooper provides a detailed picture of life in western North Carolina in the early nineteenth-century. After working as a “bound boy” at a “trade post at the edge of the Nation,” Will is adopted by a Cherokee elder, Bear. Will eventually leads the clan as a white Indian chief and then as a Colonel for the Confederacy. Still haunted by the memory of his one true love, Claire, Will escapes solitude through his travels.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Frazier, Charles, Historical, Mountains

Joanna Catherine Scott. The Road from Chapel Hill. New York: Penguin, 2006.

This Civil War novel follows the intertwining stories of a young woman from an elite Wilmington family, a runaway slave, and a dirt-farmer’s son turned fugitive-slave-catcher.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog.

Comments Off on Joanna Catherine Scott. The Road from Chapel Hill. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Historical, Novels to Read Online, Orange, Piedmont, Scott, Joanna Catherine

Ron Rash. The World Made Straight. New York: Holt, 2006.

Past and present are entertwined in this novel when 17-year-old Travis Shelton begins to investigate his ancestors’ role in the 1863 Civil War massacre at Shelton Laurel. Travis has just dropped out of school and spends most of his time hanging out and reading history with a former teacher in Madison County, N.C. The teacher has turned to selling pot to make a living and needs Travis’s help when he gets in over his head with nearby drug dealers.

The World Made Straight won the 2006 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Comments Off on Ron Rash. The World Made Straight. New York: Holt, 2006.

Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Madison, Mountains, Rash, Ron, Suspense/Thriller

William R. Trotter. The Sands of Pride. New York: Avalon, 2002.

Set in Wilmington during 1861 to 1863, when the port city was the center of Confederate blockade-running efforts, The Sands of Pride is the first of Trotter’s two Civil War novels. Trotter is able to trace several narratives throughout the chaos of battle, with many of his characters based on actual people, and Trotter dramatizes many of the important events in coastal North Carolina during the Civil War. The story is continued through to the end of the war in The Fires of Pride. Trotter is also the author of a multi-volume history of the Civil War in North Carolina, and can be counted in these novels to provide accurate depictions of events, and careful attention to historic detail.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2002, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Trotter, William R.

William R. Trotter. The Fires of Pride. New York: Carrol & Graf, 2003.

This book, the second of Trotter’s Civil War novels, finishes the story started in The Sands of Pride. Starting in 1863, after the Confederacy’s defeat at Gettysburg, The Fires of Pride is set in Wilmington and continues through the end of the war. Trotter is able to trace several narratives throughout the chaos of battle, with many of his characters based on actual people. He also dramatizes many of the important events of the war, including the Union assault on Fort Fisher and the career of an ironclad ram in the Confederate Navy. Trotter is also the author of a multi-volume history of the Civil War in North Carolina, and can be counted on in these novels to provide accurate depictions of events, and careful attention to historic detail.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Coast, Historical, New Hanover, Novels in Series, Trotter, William R.

Thomas Wolfe. O Lost. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.

O Lost is the original, unedited version of Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe’s classic novel about a sensitive young man growing up in pre-Depression Altamont, a fictional version of the author’s hometown of Asheville. Wolfe’s manuscript was cut and reshaped by the author with the help of legendary editor Maxwell Perkins. Now readers can see the raw material for themselves, including a long introductory section on protagonist Eugene Gant’s ancestors in the Civil War.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

Comments Off on Thomas Wolfe. O Lost. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.

Filed under 2000, 2000-2009, Buncombe, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Wolfe, Thomas