Intimate glimpses of Gettysburg in history and marking the lives of its residents today, mingled with echoes of the several wars that mark the novel's characters: a fine idea for some other writer, but way beyond the skill of this one. We have too many characters for this short novel and all presented through the single, distinctly feminine, High Romantic voice of the author. Not a novel to persuade one to suspend disbelief. Not sure what the reviewers' stars are all about.

I stumbled across Hearts of Soldiers quite by chance--and I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful book about families in crisis, with the time when a nation was in crisis as an historical backdrop. This is an author whose future work I look forward to reading.

I finished THE HEARTS OF SOLDIERS in two days--once I read that terrific Prologue, I was completely hooked and could not NOT keep on reading. I was compelled to find out what happens to these characters--closely-drawn people we might meet everyday, we might even BE them. Joan Schroeder leads us into their hearts and we learn about their passions, fears, failures, terrible griefs, and their hopes. I especially liked Cal, the almost-retired policeman, his still-passionate love for his wife Ellen (who leaves him early on in the book), and his sense of failure about his absent son. Also I'll never forget Hannah, the shining-star precocious daughter of the main character Allison, and Allison's struggle to recover from Hannah's death (I'm not giving anything away - we learn about this in Chapter One). The writing is wonderful--with beautiful and sometimes mystical images like, "I opened the window and brushed the drift of snow from the sill, and that baby's bright soul flew out of our house into the night, trailing light so intense I had to shield my eyes...," or later in the book, "Beneath our bodies, the quilted stars spread across the darkness like Heaven come to Earth." As an aspiring writer myself (also librarian and constant reader), I know how difficult this is. When I tell friends about the book, I say that reading it was like devouring a "death-by-chocolate" dessert--so rich and intense I had to pause now and then to savor and reflect on what was happening. Compared to some recent novels that I consider overpraised, if not also bloodless and contrived (my opinion about M.Cunningham's The Hours and Schlink's The Reader), HEARTS is the real thing. You'll remember this book. It will change you.