And There I'll Be a Soldier: A Western Story - Softcover

Boggs, Johnny D

4.1

83 ratings by Goodreads

9781470861445: And There I'll Be a Soldier: A Western Story

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1470861445 ISBN 13: 9781470861445

Publisher: Blackstone Western, 2017

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Tormented by Southern partisans, Missouri farm boy Caleb Cole joins the Union's 18th Missouri. About the same time, down on the Texas coast, violin-playing Ryan McCalla, from a well-to-do family, enlists in the Confederacy's 2nd Texas -- mainly in the spirit of adventure -- with some friends.

The two teenagers are about to grow up quickly.

Fate will bring the two together -- along with a teen-age girl from Corinth, Mississippi, when the Confederate and Union armies clash at Shiloh, Tennessee, and then again in the town of Corinth.

They will learn that war is far from glorious.

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About the Author:

Johnny D. Boggs, called by Booklist magazine ''among the best Western writers at work today,'' has won six Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America and a Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

From Booklist:

The prolific Boggs intercuts the stories of two Civil War recruits, Missourian Caleb Cole and Texan Ryan McCalla, as they make their way through minor skirmishes (Caleb) and callow flirtations (Ryan) toward the savage two-day battle at Shiloh. Caleb is an innocent farm boy who is shocked not only by the brutality of war, but also by the corruption of yokels who have suddenly become officers. Ryan, ostensibly cut of finer cloth, is dragged down by war until he’s thoughtlessly able to kill an old man and bash his dead face repeatedly. Plausibly, Boggs draws his innocents together in some of the novel’s most affecting moments. But their individual encounters with a nurse, Grace Dehner, are less plausible, and the strange epilogue, set in 1895, undermines what could have been a more satisfying story. No question, Boggs captures the quick terror of combat in harsh scenes that bring to mind The Red Badge of Courage and Ambrose Bierce’s “What I Saw atShiloh.” Students of the battle will note his flawless research. --John Mort

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