The debut novel from one of my favorite authors tracks a horse thief and an orphan who bond and find love amid the turmoil and destruction of the final year of the brutal Civil War.
“You like to think that people, in general, and I mean on the scale of generations, are learning from their mistakes, getting better. But with what all I seen, I don't know if I could believe that.”
Taylor Brown's debut novel Fallen Land is set in the final year of the Civil War. Callum, an Irish horse thief, fled to America an orphan at fifteen years old. Ava's family is gone, killed by war. The young couple find one another and bond to each other in their desperate run to escape the devastated South.
They encounter the fiery ruin of Sherman's March on their way to safety and a new life, and their love is one beautiful light in the darkness of the country's ravaging war.
“You die down there, you better hope I live a real long time. Because that's all the goddamn peace you're gonna get.”
I was soooo stressed reading Ava and Callum's circumstances, but the preciousness of lives lived moment by moment (while the characters fight for survival--and also attempt to live as good people and find love and joy) was wrought beautifully by Brown.
Their perspective of coming upon the devastation immediately after Sherman's March through Atlanta was particularly shocking and affecting.
This is a rough yet sometimes tender story set at the end of the Civil War, amid the confusion and desperation and cruelty and kindnesses of that time.
I love Taylor Brown's books!
I included this book in the Greedy Reading List Six Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War.
Brown also wrote the wonderful novels Gods of Howl Mountain, Wingwalkers, and Rednecks.
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