North by Night

July 1863. The charge on Fort Wagner has shattered whatever innocence Union Lieutenant Timothy Bradford carried into this war. Now he and his friend Red Kelly find themselves rotting in a Confederate jail in South Carolina, their futures measured in the slow tick of confinement. But Bradford is not ready to die behind these walls. With his fellow prisoner, he makes a desperate break into the labyrinthine swamplands of the Lowcountry, beginning an arduous journey toward a home in Connecticut that may as well be on another continent. Peter Burchard, drawing on the real life of Captain V. B. Chamberlain of the Seventh Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, crafts a survival story that pulses with the raw hunger of a young man who has seen enough battle to know what he's fleeing from and what he's running toward. The coastal marshes become a character themselves, treacherous and beautiful, hiding Bradford and his companion from pursuers while threatening them with starvation, exposure, and the ever-present possibility of recapture. This is war writing stripped to its barest elements: the bonds between soldiers, the will to survive, and the long road home. For readers who hunger for adventure rooted in real history, who want to feel the sweat and fear of a Civil War escape in their bones, North by Night delivers.