The Black Flower
A Novel of the Civil War
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
A Confederate soldier confronts the horror of battle and the power of grace in this "poignant, haunting, and important" novel of the Civil War (The Tennessean, Nashville).
A New York Times Notable Book and Winner of the William Boyd Award for Best Military Novel
In November 1864, Gen. John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee prepares to launch an assault on Union forces near Franklin, Tennessee. Dirty, exhausted, and hungry, the Confederate soldiers form a line of battle across an open field. Among them stands Pvt. Bushrod Carter, a twenty-six-year-old rifleman from Cumberland, Mississippi. Against all odds, Bushrod has survived three years of war unscathed—but his luck is about to run out.
Wounded in the battle, Bushrod is taken to a makeshift hospital on a nearby plantation. There, he falls under the care of Anna Hereford, who bears her own scars from years of relentless bloodshed and tragedy. In the grisly aftermath of one of the Confederate army's most disastrous campaigns, Anna and Bushrod seek salvation and understanding in each other. Their fragile bond carries with it the hope of a life beyond the war, and the risk of a pain too devastating to endure.
Written with profound empathy and meticulous attention to historical detail, The Black Flower brilliantly portrays the staggering human toll of America's bloodiest conflict. In his award-winning debut novel, "Howard Bahr casts a tale of war as powerful as any you'll ever find" (Southern Living).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Amidst all the powerful Civil War historical fiction of recent years, Bahr's first novel stands as a memorable story of war at its most emotional and painful. The battle at Franklin, Tenn., in November 1864 was a classic Pyrrhic victory for the South. The Confederate army of General John Bell Hood, though victorious, was utterly destroyed in the fighting. Bushrod Carter is a soldier in the Cumberland Rifles, a Mississippi outfit whittled down to a few souls by years of war. Facing yet another grim day's work in the blood and smoke, Bushrod and his closest friends, starved and tired, go through their pre-battle rituals. As seasoned veterans, they know what is to come and face their fate stoically, with an almost supernatural feeling of displacement as they jest grimly about the black flower, a soldier's sense of foreboding. The aftermath is even more horrible than the chaos and terror of close combat. Friends are dead or missing. Deserters scour the battlefield looting the dead. The wounded are dragged to makeshift field hospitals where drunken surgeons wait with dull saws. Not a few men go crazy. Bushrod barely survives. He is badly wounded and falls under the tender, hypnotic spell of Anna Hereford, a young woman assisting at the field hospital. In their short time together, Bushrod and Anna seek salvation and understanding from each other, but the black flower is always present. Bahr's blend of historical fact with gut-wrenching emotion has produced a riveting novel of the Civil War, a frighteningly realistic portrait of men and women caught in an awfulness beyond their control. BOMC and QPB alternates. FYI: Black Flower was nominated for the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction.
