Hallam's War Book

Hugh and Serena Hallam have left everything they knew in Charleston behind, hoping to create a stable, productive home for themselves and their three children in the near-wilderness of West Tennessee. Though now war may loom on the horizon, life at Palmyra is good, both for them and — so they believe — their slaves. And Hugh is convinced that reasonable men of good will might yet prevail against the increasingly tense atmosphere dividing the two American cultures.

Capable and practical, he is nevertheless considered by his neighbors to be an idealist, with progressive notions regarding the science of agriculture and the requirements of Southern commerce, an ambivalent attitude toward slavery, and a confidence about the way things should be done. But when events move their entire world toward destruction, Hugh's values are put to the test with only his surpassing love for Serena, her surprising strength, and his own belief in himself to possibly sustain him.

Elisabeth Payne Rosen's powerful debut is authentic and carefully researched. From Nashville and Memphis to Richmond, Charleston and Washington, D.C., and across the bloody battlefields of Shiloh and Bull Run, Rosen brings vividly to life a tragic, heart-rending tale shot through with moments of beauty and joy.

Publishers Weekly

Rosen, a deacon in the Episcopal church and a hospital chaplain, delivers an auspicious debut set during the Civil War. Serena Hallam, the beautiful daughter of a prominent Charleston family, is married to handsome Hugh Hallam, a Virginia native, West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran. The happy couple lives with their three children and a dozen slaves at Palmyra Farm in Tennessee. A progressive who is concerned for the welfare of his slaves, Hallam laments the growing sectional acrimony and insists that rational heads will prevail in the end. Regardless, when the war begins, Hallam puts aside "his conflicted loyalties" and joins the Confederate army. Appointed commander of the 8th Tennessee Infantry Regiment, he is wounded and taken prisoner at Shiloh. In his absence, Serena struggles against long odds to run Palmyra Farm and hold the family together. Rosen paints a balanced picture of antebellum life and writes convincingly about the horrors of combat. (Her description of field hospitals is especially chilling.) Civil War buffs in particular will welcome this thoughtful historical novel. (May)

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