Quite So

In the grim tedium of Civil War soldiering, one man carries something unexpected into the trenches: a tattered Latin grammar book. John Bladburn, called 'Quite So' for his habit of agreeing with everything, is the quietest soul in the Army of the Potomac's mess. His comrades cherish him, yet none truly know the loneliness he carries: the girl named Mary who married another, the family now gone, the dreams of a life beyond killing that live only in his dog-eared pages. When picket duty claims him, the grammar book becomes his shroud, and his final words - those simple words he's always said - take on unbearable weight. Aldrich, writing with Victorian restraint, transforms a small man into an elegy for all the quiet hopes war extinguishes.