Kathie's Soldiers

It is 1861, and the nation is tearing itself apart. In a small American town, twelve-year-old Kathie Alston watches the men in her life prepare for a war that promises to take everything from her. Her uncle Robert and the dashing young Robert Alston speak of glory and duty with the reckless confidence of those who have never seen a battlefield, while Kathie is left to confront what sacrifice actually means when the breakfast table grows quieter and the letters stop coming. Amanda M. Douglas, writing in the late nineteenth century, captures a peculiar truth about wartime: that the battles fought on home front are fought in the space between what we hope for and what we fear, and that courage sometimes wears an apron rather than a uniform. Through Kathie's eyes, we see the Civil War not as a series of famous engagements but as a slow unraveling of the world a young girl thought she knew. This is a book about waiting, about the weight of letters never written, and about the particular bravery required of those left behind to hold everything together while history marches past their windows.