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THE
DEATH OF A CONFEDERATE COLONEL
Civil War Stories and a Novella
Pat Carr
Eyewitnesses
to a war just outside the window
Dramatically
compelling and historically informed, The Death of a Confederate
Colonel takes us into the lives of those left behind
during the Civil War. These stories, all with Arkansas settings,
are filled with the trauma of the time. They tell of a Confederate
woman’s care of and growing affection for a wounded
Union soldier, a plantation mistress’s singular love
for a sick slave child, and an eight-year-old girl’s
fight for survival against frigid cold, injury, starvation,
heartbreak, and lawlessness.
Here are
women holding down the home front with heroism and loyalty,
or, sometimes, with weakness and duplicity. Will a young belle
remain loyal to her wounded fiance? How long can a caring
nurse hold her finger on a severed artery? And how does anyone
comprehend the legacy of slavery and the brutality of war?
The
Death of a Confederate Colonel triumphs in its portrayal
of desperate circumstances coated in the patina of the Civil
War era, the complexity of ordinary people confronting situations
that change them forever.
“Intensely
imagined, elegantly and efficiently told, the eight short
stories and the powerful novella comprising Pat Carr’s
The Death of a Confederate Colonel gracefully summon
up for us our past. . . . Pat Carr is an admirably gifted
writer, counted among our best and brightest; and this book
is a memorable achievement.”
—George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox
and Empty Bed Blues
“Pat Carr’s voice is distinctive, clear, and sharp.
If her startling imagination reminds one of Ambrose Bierce’s,
its range is much wider than his. The Death of a Confederate
Colonel belongs high on the reading list of Civil War fiction.”
—David Madden, founding director of the U.S. Civil War
Center and author of Sharpshooter
Pat Carr, whose stories Leonard Michaels
has described as “finely controlled and significantly
moving,” has written twelve books of fiction, including
If We Must Die, a finalist in the PEN book awards.
Her more than one hundred short stories have been published
in the Southern Review, Yale Review, and
Best American Short Stories, among many other publications.
She lives in Elkins, Arkansas.
March
2007
6 x 9, 176 pages
$16.95 (s) paper
978-1-55728-835-6
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