It appears that the author of this book spent a good deal of time researching 19th century daily life and Forrest's campaigns. Unfortunately, that doesn't make this a good book. The dialogue is unbelievable, a weird mixture of overdone dialect and stiff formalism, and the characters seem shallow and unenthralling. I got bored with this and wasn't able to even finish it, and that's very unusual for me.

The author of this book does a fine job of balancing the personal lives of the characters and their southern society with the civl war overtones. It is very easy to find a book on the war between the states, it is a much more difficult task to find a book about everyday people and regular families being swept up into the war. This book is really about people and their lives, everything from romance to friendship, using the civil war as a backdrop. For that, it is most excellently done.