Author Curt Locklear: I am an award-winning author, history teacher, speaker, positive education consultant, and family man. I tell jokes, play guitar and banjo, smile a lot and love supporting others. My father trained a race-horse in the Kentucky Derby. My mother was a librarian. I’m related to the first wing-walker. My heritage is Southern and Northern. Visit my website at: curtlocklearauthor.com Like my Facebook page: Email me: curt@curtlocklearauthor.com Follow me on Twitter: @CurtLock
Asunder
A Novel of the Civil War
by Curt Locklear
Asunder
A Novel of the Civil War
by Curt Locklear
Published Apr 29, 2016
269 Pages
Genre: FICTION / Historical / General
Book Details
Be sure to watch the exciting book trailer below!
"I'M TRAPPED!" Sara Reeder, a headstrong, beguiling, Southern sympathizer is caught between charging armies!
"AWAKEN, SPIRITS"... "Tell me where my husband, Joseph, fell in battle." Cyntha Favor, an ardent abolitionist and believer in Spiritualism, seeks to free her dead husband's tormented soul.
EXCEPT... Joseph, a Union soldier, is not dead! Knocked unconscious in battle, he has lost all memory. Nursed to health by Sara and her father, Lucas, a disabled veteran, Joseph feels drawn to Sara, yet compelled to find his past.
WAR SURROUNDS the Reeder home. Transformed into a field hospital, their only support is Dred Workman, a Union traitor.
FORMER SLAVE, Josiah Reynolds, is protector and confidant of Cyntha. Deep in slave territory, he knows the danger he faces.
THE FOX SISTERS -President Lincoln's wife invited spiritualists to invoke séances in the White House. These most famous of all Spiritualists become Cyntha's hope.
MARAUDERS terrorize, kill and move ever closer to the Reeders' farm.
With RIVER PIRATES, INTENSE BATTLES, and CAPTIVATING ROMANCE, from Texas to New York, Missouri to Minnesota, the WAR rages. Can love triumph? Who will survive? ASUNDER is a GRIPPING EPIC.
Book Excerpt
Excerpt from Asunder
In front of the dark mass of soldiers, women and children and slaves still in night clothes hurtled along, tripping, falling and screaming. The family camps lay directly in the path of the onslaught of horse and man and steel.
“There are so many! I have no way back. I’m trapped here.” Sara’s heart pounded like a hammer. Unable to decide to rush to the aid of the terror-stricken families or pursue her original course, she turned the horse first one way, then another, then spun in a circle, finally facing away from the Yankee charge.
Straight in front of her, an officer of the Texas regiment gathered a line of his soldiers. They knelt, shouldering a mishmash of armaments from flintlock muskets to shotguns to revolvers and rifles. She galloped hard past them and reined her steed to a halt.
Their rifles cracked. In the glow of the campfires, she saw several Yankees fall, but nowhere near enough of them to stop their charge.
Sara turned her mare again in her original direction and dug her heels into the horse’s sides. The mare sprang forward through running men, past campfires, collapsed tents, crates, barrels, sacks of food, and discarded rifles. Terrified, rider-less horses shrieked, dashing all about her like the zigzag of lightning strikes. She passed almost all of the fleeing Rebels and pulled Esther to a halt.
Scanning the men rushing from the Yankee onslaught, she did not see the young singer, nor the officer’s wife. “I have to find them!” she yelled. She called to one soldier, “Have you seen a woman and a child?” The soldier paid her no heed, but kept running.
Out of the trees, Rebels in large number were moving forward a dozen yards in front of her. “Form up here! Make a line here,” a hoarse voice ordered. The wavy line extended behind a rail fence, stretching on the edge of an oval-shaped grazing meadow, bounded by the corn fields to the south and trees to the north.
The morning sky was turning violet and pink, revealing patches of bright yellow and orange flowers that dotted the bucolic setting.
The growing sunlight revealed vapor rising from the sweating soldiers, their shirts and jackets steaming like their souls were already escaping them before death.