Eleven-year-old Marty Preston loves to spend time up in the hills behind his home near Friendly, West Virginia. Sometimes he takes his .22 rifle to see what he can shoot, like some cans lined up on a rail fence. Other times he goes up early in the morning just to sit and watch the fox and deer. But one summer Sunday, Marty comes across something different on the road just past the old Shiloh schoolhouses -- a young beagle -- and the trouble begins. What do you do when a dog you suspect is being mistreated runs away and comes to you? When it is someone else's dog? When the man who owns him has a gun? This is Marty's problem, and he finds it is one he has to face alone. When his solution gets too big for him to handle, things become more frightening still. Marty puts his courage on the line, and discovers in the process that it is not always easy to separate right from wrong. Sometimes, however, you do almost anything to save a dog.
Marty Preston wonders why it is that despite Judd Traver's attempts to redeem himself everyone is still so willing to think the worst of him. Marty's friend David is sure that Judd will be named as the murderer of a man who has been missing. Others are sure that Judd is behind a series of burglaries in the area. But Marty's parents and, with some trepidation, Marty himself persist in their attempts to be good neighbors and to give Judd a second chance. Now that Marty has Shiloh, maybe he can help Judd to take better care of his other dogs. Then again, maybe folks are right -- there's no way a Judd Travers can ever change for the good. Then a terrifying life-or-death situation brings this dilemma into sharp focus. Saving Shiloh is a powerful novel that brings this trilogy to a close.
Marty gets to keep Shiloh! He wasn’t able to rescue all the dogs that Judd Travers mistreated, but at least Shiloh is safe . . . right? Not necessarily, it turns out. With hunting season approaching, Judd has started drinking again, and hunting on the outskirts of Marty’s family property. What if Judd tries to take back Shiloh? What if one of Marty’s sisters gets in the way of Judd’s shotgun? It seems only a matter of time before something goes very wrong. The thing is, Marty knows a secret about Judd that no one else does, and if anything terrible happens, he will never be able to forgive himself for keeping quiet. Is it time for Marty to speak up? And can he find the courage to do so, before someone he loves gets hurt?
This fictional re-creation of the battle of Shiloh in April 1862 is a stunning work of imaginative history, from Shelby Foote, beloved historian of the Civil War. Shiloh conveys not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants’ hearts and minds. Through the eyes of officers and illiterate foot soldiers, heroes and cowards, Shiloh creates a dramatic mosaic of a critical moment in the making of America, complete to the haze of gunsmoke and the stunned expression in the eyes of dying men. Shiloh, which was hailed by The New York Times as “imaginative, powerful, filled with precise visual details…a brilliant book” fulfills the standard set by Shelby Foote’s monumental three-part chronical of the Civil War.
"Marty and his best friend, Shiloh are on another adventure. Marty learns when a secret is too dangerous to keep, and that hate can spread like fire"--
"These stories will last," said Raymond Carver of Shiloh and Other Stories when it was first published, and almost two decades later this stunning fiction debut and winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award has become a modern American classic. In Shiloh, Bobbie Ann Mason introduces us to her western Kentucky people and the lives they forge for themselves amid the ups and downs of contemporary American life, and she poignantly captures the growing pains of the New South in the lives of her characters as they come to terms with feminism, R-rated movies, and video games. "Bobbie Ann Mason is one of those rare writers who, by concentrating their attention on a few square miles of native turf, are able to open up new and surprisingly wide worlds for the delighted reader," said Robert Towers in The New York Review of Books.
There has been many novels written about the Civil War in the East. Now Dan Korn brings to life the incredible story of the western theater's first major battle, the titantic struggle between two massive ill-prepared armies as they met on the shore of the mighty Tennessee River at a lazy riverboat landing called Pittsburg Landing. Nestled in a glen not far from the water's edge was a sleepy house of worship, named Shiloh Meetinghouse. Shiloh means "place of peace." After the events of early April, 1862, Americans would never think of peace when they heard the name Shiloh ever again. As Dawn's Gray Steel opens, the South is reeling over the recent twin losses of the Tennessee forts Henry and Donelson, and the taking of the Tennessee capital, Nashville, by the thus far victorious western armies of the North.These victories have given the North a new hero in the form of a quiet and unassuming leader, Ulysses S. Grant. To the North, Grant has become "Unconditional Surrender " Grant. To end the string of Yankee victories, the Confederacy turns to the quixotic and charismatic Albert Sidney Johnston, a man some consider to be the greatest soldier in the Confederacy, and the man Jefferson Davis entrusts to save the Confederacy in the West. It will become Johnston's mission to end Grant's run. Victory has brought Grant fame, and with that fame comes a certain relaxed feeling in Grant that allows him to place his still relatively inexperienced Army of the Tennessee into camp along the Tennessee without taking many defensive precautions. It is this relaxed atmosphere that causes deep anxiety in one of Grant's newest division commanders, the cigar-chomping, wild-eyed William Tecumseh Sherman. Grant assures his new subordinate that Johnston would be crazy to attack the Union Army where they are. It is a mistake that Johnston is determined to make Grant regret. Johnston refuses to heed the advice of his own subordinates and decides to launch an all out attack against the still unsuspecting Union camp. Against all odds the attack will be almost a complete surprise, stunning the unsuspecting Union forces with its ferocity. The bewildered Yankees fight back with pluck and equal determination but the Confederate forces will be on the verge of a stunning victory, when fate and the incredible stubbornness of one man intervenes. It will be here at Shiloh that Johnston will bet his life and roll the "iron dice" of battle in one magnificent gamble. In the smoke-filled swamps and ravines along the Tennessee, Sherman will be forced to finally face his fears, and find a joy in the depth of his abilities he never knew existed. And it will be here, in the incredible maelstrom that roars about him, that Grant will demonstrate for all to see an amazingly unflappable coolness, a coolness that will allow him to see what no other man sees that day, and enable him to snatch an incredible victory from almost certain defeat. It will be an amazing ability that will help propel him down the path to unprecedented glory, respect, and eventually, the trust of his President. A trust that will eventually bring Grant to the East, and an inevitable meeting with Robert E. Lee
Some 100,000 soldiers fought in the April 1862 battle of Shiloh, and nearly 20,000 men were killed or wounded; more Americans died on that Tennessee battlefield than had died in all the nation’s previous wars combined. In the first book in his new series, Steven E. Woodworth has brought together a group of superb historians to reassess this significant battleandprovide in-depth analyses of key aspects of the campaign and its aftermath. The eight talented contributors dissect the campaign’s fundamental events, many of which have not received adequate attention before now. John R. Lundberg examines the role of Albert Sidney Johnston, the prized Confederate commander who recovered impressively after a less-than-stellar performance at forts Henry and Donelson only to die at Shiloh; Alexander Mendoza analyzes the crucial, and perhaps decisive, struggle to defend the Union’s left; Timothy B. Smith investigates the persistent legend that the Hornet’s Nest was the spot of the hottest fighting at Shiloh; Steven E. Woodworth follows Lew Wallace’s controversial march to the battlefield and shows why Ulysses S. Grant never forgave him; Gary D. Joiner provides the deepest analysis available of action by the Union gunboats; Grady McWhineydescribes P. G. T. Beauregard’s decision to stop the first day’s attack and takes issue with his claim of victory; and Charles D. Grear shows the battle’s impact on Confederate soldiers, many of whom did not consider the battle a defeat for their side. In the final chapter, Brooks D. Simpson analyzes how command relationships—specifically the interactions among Grant, Henry Halleck, William T. Sherman, and Abraham Lincoln—affected the campaign and debunks commonly held beliefs about Grant’s reactions to Shiloh’s aftermath. The Shiloh Campaign will enhance readers’ understanding of a pivotal battle that helped unlock the western theater to Union conquest. It is sure to inspire further study of and debate about one of the American Civil War’s momentous campaigns.
Thirty-two years after the battle of Shiloh, Lew Wallace returned to the battlefield, mapping the route of his April 1862 march. Ulysses S. Grant, Wallace's commander at Shiloh, expected Wallace and his Third Division to arrive early in the afternoon of April 6. Wallace and his men, however, did not arrive until nightfall, and in the aftermath of the bloodbath of Shiloh Grant attributed Wallace's late arrival to a failure to obey orders. By mapping the route of his march and proving how and where he had actually been that day, the sixty-seven-year-old Wallace hoped to remove the stigma of "Shiloh and its slanders." That did not happen. Shiloh still defines Wallace's military reputation, overshadowing the rest of his stellar military career and making it easy to forget that in April 1862 he was a rising military star, the youngest major general in the Union army. Wallace was devoted to the Union, but he was also pursuing glory, fame, and honor when he volunteered to serve in April 1861. In Shadow of Shiloh: Major General Lew Wallace in the Civil War, author Gail Stephens specifically addresses Wallace's military career and its place in the larger context of Civil War military history.
